This book accompanies the Ashmolean's first exhibition of its new Ashmolean NOW series, featuring the work of painters Flora Yukhnovich and Daniel Crews-Chubb, which will in part be inspired by the Museum's historic collections.

Daniel Crews-Chubb (b.1984 in Northampton, lives and works in London) has quickly gained international recognition for his innovative and expressive collage paintings, which interrogate motifs and archetypes of art history, while also linking to the legacies of 20th Century Modernist painting, recalling de Kooning and Art Brut. The paintings of Flora Yukhnovich (b.1990 in Norwich, lives and works in London) offer glimpses of figuration in an otherwise abstract assemblage of brushstrokes, recalling the light, palette and formal considerations favored by Italian Baroque artists such as Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, and French Rococo artists. Although the two artists' often large-sized and colorful paintings differ in style, they raise comparable questions about the medium of painting today and how we read a painting against art historical backgrounds. They explore the expressive materiality of paint itself and a gestural painting process. Lena Fritsch is the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Ashmolean Museum. Before joining the Ashmolean in 2017, she worked as Assistant Curator for International Art at Tate Modern. Lena co-curated the large-scale retrospective exhibitions Giacometti (2017) and Agnes Martin (2015), and curated displays of works by artists such as Ai Weiwei and Simryn Gill. She has recently published the acclaimed title Ravens and Red Lipstick. Japanese Photography since 1945, London, New York and Kyoto (Thames & Hudson); Tokyo: Art & Photography (Ashmolean Museum).