Untimely Modernism: Painting and collage in the 21st century

Frank Bowling Study Day, “Bowling & Modernism” Roundtable, Hauser & Wirth Paris

April 2025, Paris

Frank Bowling’s first solo exhibition in Paris, presented by Hauser & Wirth, brings the modern master of British painting into closer contact with some of his most formative influences, Henri Matisse among them, than ever before. When asked a number of years ago to name a painting of the Euro-American canon that had the greatest influence on his own work, Bowling responded unequivocally that it was Matisse’s 1953 collage Snail. It is hardly surprising, then, that when Bowling began incorporating collaged elements in his paintings of the 1980s and onward, he would eventually would offer a response to Matisse in the form of 2000’s Back to Snail.

The remarks prepared for this roundtable consider the formal resonances and departures Bowling’s interpretation of Snail represents and how such differences — namely, its scale and inclusion of sewn elements into the collage — reflect Bowling’s broader and remarkably conflictual views on 20th century modernism.