.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
‘They are suggestions of people … They don’t share our concerns or anxieties. They are somewhere else altogether’ (Lynette Yiadom-Boakye)
In The World in Agreement With (2011), Lynette Yiadom-Boakye captures an ephemeral and suggestive moment as two men shake hands, transforming a familiar social exchange into an image charged with implication. The scene is pared-back and intimate. The figures occupy the canvas in half-length profile, facing one another against a luminous green ground that offers no narrative cues. Their bodies incline gently inward, creating a quiet symmetry that draws the eye toward their clasped hands. The figure to the left appears to smile faintly, his expression open and animated, while the man opposite meets him with a steadier, more contemplative gaze. This subtle contrast in demeanour introduces an ambiguity to the exchange, leaving the nature of their relationship unresolved. The artist’s characteristically loose yet assured brushwork lends the figures a striking immediacy. Dark garments dissolve into broad passages of brown and black, while quick flashes of light articulate foreheads, sleeves, and hands, allowing form to emerge and recede within the paint surface. The background remains deliberately indeterminate, concentrating our attention on gesture and expression.
The World in Agreement With was painted in 2011, shortly before Yiadom-Boakye’s nomination for the prestigious Turner Prize in 2013. In 2012 it was shown as part of the Future Generation Art Prize at the Pinchuk Art Centre, Kyiv—which the artist won—and subsequently at the Palazzo Contarini Polignac during the 2013 Venice Biennale. One of the most distinguished contemporary painters working in Britain, Yiadom-Boakye is renowned for her enigmatic depictions of fictitious Black figures who inhabit indeterminate temporal and spatial realms. Existing outside fixed narratives, her subjects resist biography and specificity. As the artist has noted, ‘They are suggestions of people … They don’t share our concerns or anxieties. They are somewhere else altogether’ (L. Yiadom-Boakye, quoted in N. Rubin Nathan, ‘Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s Fashionable Eye’, The New York Times Magazine, 15 November 2010). A writer as much as a painter, Yiadom-Boakye draws inspiration from a wide range of literary and art-historical sources. Her figures appear to live lives beyond the confines of the canvas: viewers are granted access only to a single, unresolved moment. Many of her compositions echo works from the Western canon, reimagined through a contemporary lens and populated by a new cast of characters. In doing so, Yiadom-Boakye both acknowledges and reframes art-historical tradition, introducing figures long absent from its narratives.
In light of its title and subject matter, the present work can also be understood in dialogue with the artist’s celebrated cycle of Diplomacy paintings, which similarly stage encounters defined by gesture and psychological nuance. Across these multi-figure compositions, meaning resides in small acts of bodily communication—a glance, a stance, a measured distance between bodies—that suggest systems of protocol, tact, and mediation. The handshake at the centre of The World in Agreement With echoes this language, hovering between warmth and formality, intimacy and obligation. Stripped of contextual detail and suspended within an indeterminate space, the exchange assumes an almost archetypal quality, transforming a specific social ritual into a broader meditation on the delicate choreography of human relations. The men’s encounter becomes more than a simple greeting or agreement; it suggests an unspoken negotiation, a shared understanding, or a moment of mutual recognition. The painting elevates a familiar social ritual into a site of reflection, inviting the viewer to consider the subtle dynamics of connection, trust, and formality that underpin ordinary encounters.
In The World in Agreement With (2011), Lynette Yiadom-Boakye captures an ephemeral and suggestive moment as two men shake hands, transforming a familiar social exchange into an image charged with implication. The scene is pared-back and intimate. The figures occupy the canvas in half-length profile, facing one another against a luminous green ground that offers no narrative cues. Their bodies incline gently inward, creating a quiet symmetry that draws the eye toward their clasped hands. The figure to the left appears to smile faintly, his expression open and animated, while the man opposite meets him with a steadier, more contemplative gaze. This subtle contrast in demeanour introduces an ambiguity to the exchange, leaving the nature of their relationship unresolved. The artist’s characteristically loose yet assured brushwork lends the figures a striking immediacy. Dark garments dissolve into broad passages of brown and black, while quick flashes of light articulate foreheads, sleeves, and hands, allowing form to emerge and recede within the paint surface. The background remains deliberately indeterminate, concentrating our attention on gesture and expression.
The World in Agreement With was painted in 2011, shortly before Yiadom-Boakye’s nomination for the prestigious Turner Prize in 2013. In 2012 it was shown as part of the Future Generation Art Prize at the Pinchuk Art Centre, Kyiv—which the artist won—and subsequently at the Palazzo Contarini Polignac during the 2013 Venice Biennale. One of the most distinguished contemporary painters working in Britain, Yiadom-Boakye is renowned for her enigmatic depictions of fictitious Black figures who inhabit indeterminate temporal and spatial realms. Existing outside fixed narratives, her subjects resist biography and specificity. As the artist has noted, ‘They are suggestions of people … They don’t share our concerns or anxieties. They are somewhere else altogether’ (L. Yiadom-Boakye, quoted in N. Rubin Nathan, ‘Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s Fashionable Eye’, The New York Times Magazine, 15 November 2010). A writer as much as a painter, Yiadom-Boakye draws inspiration from a wide range of literary and art-historical sources. Her figures appear to live lives beyond the confines of the canvas: viewers are granted access only to a single, unresolved moment. Many of her compositions echo works from the Western canon, reimagined through a contemporary lens and populated by a new cast of characters. In doing so, Yiadom-Boakye both acknowledges and reframes art-historical tradition, introducing figures long absent from its narratives.
In light of its title and subject matter, the present work can also be understood in dialogue with the artist’s celebrated cycle of Diplomacy paintings, which similarly stage encounters defined by gesture and psychological nuance. Across these multi-figure compositions, meaning resides in small acts of bodily communication—a glance, a stance, a measured distance between bodies—that suggest systems of protocol, tact, and mediation. The handshake at the centre of The World in Agreement With echoes this language, hovering between warmth and formality, intimacy and obligation. Stripped of contextual detail and suspended within an indeterminate space, the exchange assumes an almost archetypal quality, transforming a specific social ritual into a broader meditation on the delicate choreography of human relations. The men’s encounter becomes more than a simple greeting or agreement; it suggests an unspoken negotiation, a shared understanding, or a moment of mutual recognition. The painting elevates a familiar social ritual into a site of reflection, inviting the viewer to consider the subtle dynamics of connection, trust, and formality that underpin ordinary encounters.