LONDON.- The work of major international artists including Andy Warhol (USA), David Hockney (UK), Gerhard Richter (Germany), Martin Kippenberger (Germany), Luc Tuymans (Belgium), Richard Hamilton (UK), Marlene Dumas (South Africa), Malcolm Morley (UK), Liu Xiaodong (China), Franz Gertsch (Switzerland), Peter Doig (UK), and Elizabeth Peyton (USA) will be featured in The Painting of Modern Life. The exhibition is curated by Ralph Rugoff, Director of The Hayward. The exhibition will feature 100 paintings from the past five decades by 22 artists. Displayed chronologically from the 1960s to the present, the show will demonstrate the power of painting to capture and comment on recent history, at a time when photographic media has become a pervasive, even overwhelming, aspect of contemporary life.

The Painting of Modern Life is the first major museum survey to explore the use and translation of photographic imagery, one of the most influential developments in the last 50 years of contemporary painting. Beginning in the 1960s when artists such as Warhol, Richter and Richard Artschwager, began making paintings that translated photographic images taken from newspapers, advertisements, historical archives and snapshots, the exhibition will show how photography has influenced not just the content but also the technique of painting. The widespread use of monochrome by painters including Vija Celmins and Tuymans; Richter’s use of a wet brush to ‘blur’ the painting; the meticulous reproduction of a flashbulb light on the flattened surface of Gertsch’s paintings; and the snapshot-like white borders framing the works of Hamilton and Morley, all deliberately alluded to photography.

Ralph Rugoff, Director of The Hayward, said: “This show will unite many of the most significant artists in the recent history of painting. Directly confronting the world in which they live, these artists draw on a wide range of photographic sources to create paintings that depict modern life. From intimate portraits of everyday life, to images relating to race riots, presidential assassination and war, their work chronicles the social and cultural landscape of the times while raising compelling questions about how we look at photographs as well as paintings.”

Highlights on show include:
· Works from the iconic ‘Death and Disaster’ series by Andy Warhol including Race Riot (1963) and Big Electric Chair (1967)
· Works by Gerhard Richter including Woman with Umbrella (1964) showing the grieving figure of Jackie Kennedy
· David Hockney’s intimate portrait of his friends Ossie Clark and Peter Schlesinger in Le Park des Sources, Vichy (1970)
· Richard Hamilton’s Swingeing London (1967) based on the wellknown
tabloid photograph of Mick Jagger under arrest for possession of drugs
· Elizabeth Peyton’s depictions of modern day royalty, Arsenal (Prince Harry) (1997) and celebrities, such as John Lennon, Mendips, 1963 (1996)
· Peter Doig’s Lapeyrouse Wall (2004) painted from an image taken by cameraphone.

The exhibition brings together contemporary history painting to explore and confront modern life. Images of celebrities such as Robert De Niro, Edie Sedgwick and Gena Rowlands in cult film roles are captured in the work of Judith Eisler and Johannes Kahrs. The Iraq War and conflict in the Middle East are alluded to in the paintings of Luc Tuymans and Wilhelm Sasnal, whilst Vija Celmins looks at historic images of World War II. Personal moments occupy the works of other artists in the show; family portraits are recreated by Robert Bechtle and Malcolm Morley; and David Hockney and Franz Gertsch draw on their own photographs to create portraits of their friends and acquaintances from the bohemian and gay subcultures of the early 1970s.

List of artists: Richard Artschwager, Robert Bechtle, Vija Celmins, Peter Doig, Marlene Dumas, Thomas Eggerer, Judith Eisler, Franz Gertsch, Richard Hamilton, Eberhard Havekost, David Hockney, Johannes Kahrs, Johanna Kandl, Martin Kippenberger, Liu Xiaodong, Malcolm Morley, Elizabeth Peyton, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gerhard Richter, Wilhelm Sasnal, Luc Tuymans, Andy Warhol.

Catalogue - Accompanying the exhibition, a fully illustrated catalogue will feature essays by curators and leading scholars which will critically reposition and illuminate this important chapter of contemporary art history. Writers include Ralph Rugoff; Carolyn ChristovBakargiev, chief curator, Castello di Rivoli; Kaja Silverman, Professor of Rhetoric and Film, University of California; and leading critics Barry Schwabsky and Martin Herbert. There will also be an anthology of artists' writing on the subject. The Painting of Modern Life opens at The Hayward on 4 October and runs until 30 December.