"Taking Edouard Manet as its starting point and moving through the work of major painters and sculptors such as Ensor, Boccioni, Duchamp, Kollwitz, Kirchner, Beckmann, Magritte, Picasso, Hopper, Warhol, Hamilton, Pistoletto, Richter, Acconci, Sherman, Schutte, Ofili and Kentridge, as well as photographers such as Atget, Brassai, Evans, Levitt, Arnold, Weegee, Giacomelli, Goldin and Keita, Faces in the Crowd traces a history of avant-garde figuration from the 1870s to today through the works of one hundred artists." "The great revolutions in twentieth century art tend to be associated with abstraction. Yet there is a parallel history, which is equally radical. Manet's vividly realist scenarios or Jeff Wall's cinematic tableaux offer a compelling pictorial illusion of the modern. By contrast, Edvard Munch or Francis Bacon present a tortured or exhilarated inner life. For Alexander Rodchenko, the figure can be an agent of social change, revolutionary transgressive or symbolic." "This catalogue accompanies the exhibition organised by the Whitechapel Gallery and the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art."--BOOK JACKET.