state of the nation: writing contemporary british art
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© Association of Art Historians 2012 667
Reviews
State of the Nation: Writing Contemporary British ArtAlice Correia
Contemporary British Art: An Introduction by Grant Pooke, London: Routledge, 2010, 304 pp., 24 col. and 30 b. & w. illus., £24.99
Grand National: Art from Britain edited by Charles Danby, Vestfossen: Vestfossen Kunstlaboratorium, 2010, 352 pp., 137 col. and 1 b. & w. illus., £20.00
British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet by Lisa Le Feuvre and Tom Morton, London: Hayward Publishing, 2010, 192 pp., 129 col. illus., £19.99
Beyond Cultural Diversity: The Case for Creativity edited by Richard Appignanesi, London: Third Text, 2010, 152 pp., 15 col. and 6 b. & w. illus., £12.95
These four books deal with the state of contemporary
British art and together they provide useful, insightful
and sometimes contentious overviews of the themes,
issues and concerns preoccupying artistic practice, art-
historical interpretation and the making of art policy.
Each publication was written with different aims and
audiences in mind, and as such they address diverse sets
of issues and debates, not least those concerned with
when the contemporary ‘moment’ is. The defi nition
of the ‘contemporary’ in these books varies, from
the past fi ve years to the past thirty, and despite, or
perhaps because of these varied timeframes, there
are productive overlaps and divergences in the artists
and ideas that are addressed. Read collectively, these
publications probe the construction of national and art-
historical narratives.
Grant Pooke’s Contemporary British Art is one of the
fi rst (if not the fi rst) survey books to be written on
the art produced in Britain between 1987 and 2007,
and a thorough account of recent artists, art practices
and thematic tendencies is provided. Works of art are
carefully described and discussed in a clear, jargon-free
style, making this book accessible to a wide audience;
it will undoubtedly become a mainstay of school and
undergraduate reading lists. Such was the impact of
the ‘yBa’ generation that British art at the turn of the
century became a popular area for study; however,
© Association of Art Historians 2012 668
Reviews
Pooke’s book, like the others reviewed here, is at pains
to move beyond the Hirst-Emin-Lucas triumvirate. As
a result a large number of lesser-known and perhaps
less critically respected artists are included, an extreme
example being Pooke’s discussion of Jack Vettriano’s
popularity amongst mainstream audiences.
Pooke’s book is divided into four chapters. After the
Introduction, which includes a very useful literature
review in which Pooke reminds us that much of the
writing on British art in the 1990s consisted of personal
accounts of the heady years of the ‘yBa’ moment,
which often concentrated on personalities rather than
artworks, chapters follow on the art market and its
institutions; painting; installation and sculpture; and
lens based and performance art. On the back cover of
this publication, the author’s previous publication on
Marxist art history is referenced; this helps account
for the bias throughout this book for the kind of
art that addresses socio-political issues, as well as
explaining why this book starts with a discussion of
the commercial art market, its dealers and gallerists.
For although Pooke’s publication is ostensibly about
contemporary art, chapter one focuses on trade,
patronage and the place of art within New Labour’s
creative economy during the 1990s and 2000s. An
overview of public and private commissioning agencies
is provided, major British collectors are named and
the fi nancial benefi ts of art prizes discussed. All this
is a very interesting introduction to how the art world
works and it is perhaps indicative of the power this
system of trade and commerce has that it should be
given such a prominent position in this book.
Using a term introduced by Charles Harrison
and Paul Wood in Modernism in Dispute: Art since the Forties (1993), chapter two of Pooke’s survey is titled ‘Post-
Conceptual Painting’. Unfortunately, like any art term
that embodies a rejection of what has gone before,
knowledge of what has gone before is required. Lack
of space undoubtedly limited Pooke’s ability to discuss
the legacies of conceptual art, but it is a problematic
omission. Nevertheless, he does provide a useful
discussion of Greenbergian modernism and abstract
painting, and identifi es important survey exhibitions,
such as A New Spirit in Painting of 1981, and their impact
on painterly practice in Britain. Signifi cantly for the
younger generation of painters that included Chris
Ofi li and Gillian Carnegie, Pooke places their work
within an international context, demonstrating the
widespread infl uence of German conceptual painter
Gerhard Richter.
Pooke’s text comes to life when he is discussing
individual artists and artworks. Intricate descriptions
and analyses place paintings such as Keith Piper’s Nanny of the Nation Gathers Her Flock (1987) within the context of
politics in the 1980s and Margaret Thatcher’s jingoistic
defence of Little England. By positioning Piper’s
work alongside a discussion of Ken Currie’s paintings
depicting class inequality and sectarian confl ict
in Glasgow, Pooke certainly provides a persuasive
argument that painting can be a productive site for
protest and dissent within the visual arts.
Chapter three, ‘Installation Art and Sculpture
as Institutional Paradigms’, adheres closely to the
arguments presented in Claire Bishop’s Installation Art: A Critical History (2005). While it is tempting to ask
whether it would be better to read Bishop instead,
Pooke does provide a clear explanation of her notion of
‘antagonistic relations’, Nicholas Bourriaud’s ‘relational
aesthetics’ and Julia Kristeva’s ‘abjection’, and associates
these ideas with the work of artists such as Jake and
Dinos Chapman, Liam Gillick and Marc Quinn. As such
he helps readers to navigate complex theory and the
work of a diverse set of artists with ease.
The fourth chapter, ‘New Media in Translation:
Photography, Video and the Performative’, provides
an interesting literature review of photographic
theory, addressing the writings of Walter Benjamin,
Victor Burgin, John Tagg, Susan Sontag and Roland
Barthes, while also providing a brief history of major
photography exhibitions and institutions dedicated
to exhibiting photographic works in Britain. This
is certainly a useful launch pad for further research
and a comprehensive bibliography provides excellent
direction for students. However, for a chapter that
includes the word ‘performative’ in the title, there
is very little performance work here: Spartacus
Chetwynd and Marcus Coates being the most obvious
omissions.
To his credit, Pooke acknowledges his omissions
in the conclusion by suggesting that this book was
‘sampling some of the critical concerns and idioms
suggested by a range of practices’ (243). In an
introductory text there are bound to be artists who
are overlooked and practices, issues and concerns that
are excluded. What is striking, however, given Pooke’s
clear preference for art that engages with issues of
race and social politics, is his limited consideration of
female artists, feminist theory, and artists engaging
with the politics of gender and sexuality. These
concerns are limited to short discussions of Jenny
© Association of Art Historians 2012 669
Reviews
Saville and Cecily Brown, while Judith Butler is given
only the briefest of mentions.
There are other frustrations with the book,
primarily Pooke’s decision to structure his book
according to medium. While this organizing system
permits a focused analysis of medium-specifi c theory,
it does not allow for the fact that in the contemporary
moment many artists work in a number of different
media, and consequently, artists such as Yinka
Shonibare appear in at least two different chapters.
This structure is also problematic when trying to get to
grips with thematic concerns: John Keane’s paintings
made in response to the fi rst Gulf War (1990–91), Mark
Wallinger’s installation State Britain (2006) and Steve
McQueen’s photographic work Queen and Country (2007)
are all discussed in different chapters even though the
political territories addressed by each artist overlap.
This book is a well-researched and accessible text,
which will more than fulfi l its stated aim to provide
an introduction to British art from the mid-1980s to
2007 for a non-specialist audience. Pooke has created
an excellent introduction to some prominent and less
prominent artists, and has identifi ed artists in need
of further investigation. His overview of important
theoretical positions will be extremely useful within
a teaching environment, detailing as it does diffi cult
ideas in a clear, accessible way. Despite its omissions
and frustrations, this publication will be invaluable to
those wishing to study contemporary British art.
Pooke’s Introduction has a bias towards the socio-political,
and Grand National: Art from Britain continues to expand
upon British art from this perspective. Comprising
extended essays, short texts on individual artists and
artists’ illustration pages, Grand National actively seeks
to probe the nature of Britishness, exploring class,
social disorder and economic inequality through the
work of a range of artists working since the late 1970s,
including Derek Jarman and Paul Graham in the 1980s;
BANK and Keith Coventry in the 1990s; and Jeremy
Deller and Marcus Coates in the 2000s. Signifi cantly,
while Pooke’s book does not engage with the national
specifi city of his subject matter, here, an interest in
art that is about Britain and art that was produced in
Britain is signalled from the start. What is refreshing
about this publication is that like Pooke, the editor
Charles Danby does not adhere to the Cool Britannia
slogans of the 1990s. This is not bright and shiny New
Labour Britain, but a nation that is uncertain and
in some cases very upset. Bringing together newly
commissioned and re-printed texts, the publication
is a source book of ideas and positions, including as
it does, texts by Iain Aitch on British identity in the
2000s; Neil Mulholland on the visual culture of Punk;
and Peter Wollen on fi lm in the 1980s. In addition to
these extended essays are texts dedicated to selected
artists, alongside images of their works. This variety
of material creates a conversation between artists and
authors, so Mulholland’s text on Punk, Jamie Reid and
Linder provides a cultural backdrop against which the
anxieties and tensions found in Derek Jarman’s fi lm
The Last of England (1987) or Paul Graham’s photographic
series Beyond Caring (1984–85) can be understood.
Although published to coincide with an exhibition
held in Norway of the same name, this book does
not feel like a run-of-the-mill exhibition catalogue,
and nor should it be treated as one.1 Danby proposes
in his introduction that ‘this publication is neither a
document of an exhibition nor an explanation of one.
Instead it aims to establish a parallel site of engagement’
(12). The book is a test site, then, and can be divided
into two, albeit unequal, sections. The fi rst section
is organized chronologically, moving backwards in
time from now to the late 1970s, while the second,
comprising the fi nal three chapters, is thematic,
addressing the overlapping histories, methods and
concerns in British art of the past thirty years.
The introductory essays and the fi rst chapter take
critical glances at the recent debates surrounding
national identity, particularly the narratives of the
‘yBas’ and the exclusion of artists from different (that
is, not white, English) backgrounds. In his essay,
‘A Constructive Site of a Present British Art’, Danby
discusses the work of Shezad Dawood through post-
colonial theory in an attempt to tease out what impact
diasporic artists have had on a national collective
identity. What is particularly interesting is the fact that
these texts were written for a Norwegian audience, and
it would seem that explaining the complex and often
fraught nature of Britishness to other people is easier
than explaining it to a British audience.
Chapter two, ‘Brit Band’, addresses art in the 1990s
and New Labour politics through an examination of
work by BANK, Mark Wallinger and Angus Fairhurst.
In Chris Horrock’s essay, recession, both economic
and artistic, is a dominant theme, and it is argued that
the 1990s was in fact a period of political contestation
and poetic investigation in contrast to the self-
congratulatory narratives played out in the media at
the time. ‘Civil Low’ is the title of chapter three, which
© Association of Art Historians 2012 670
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seems entirely apt for a discussion of artworks made
in the divisive climate of Thatcherite politics. The
social and political lows of the 1980s are represented
by artists of different generations: Isaac Julien’s fi lm
Territories (1984) addresses the politics of race and
sexuality against the backdrop of the Notting Hill
carnival, while archival material and a new text by re-
enactment specialist Howard Giles accompanies images
of Jeremy Deller’s investigation of the 1984 miners’
strike, The Battle of Orgreave (2001).
Like the patchwork of essays and short texts
on individual artists, the colour images that run
throughout the book form visual essays, and kinships
between artists can be teased out thanks to the
thoughtful way the book has been arranged. Images
of Marcus Coates’ performance project Vision Quest (2010) at Heygate Estate dealing with housing issues in
London’s Elephant and Castle, discussed in chapter one,
resonate through the pages, connecting to chapter fi ve
and Keith Coventry’s paintings of housing estate maps
from the 1990s.
After the chronological sequence, the second
part of the book focuses on materials and thematic
issues: ‘Still Revolver’ on lens based work; ‘Constant
Matter’ on painting and memory; and ‘Object Matter’
on sculptural form and the politics of gender. Within
these chapters, the proposition that art is a site that
refl ects, comments upon and enacts dissent is strong.
Protest, confl ict and anxiety are identifi ed as enduring
features of British fi lm and photographic practice,
from Derek Jarman to Dryden Goodwin. This is an
exemplary publication on contemporary British art;
taking a political position, it is both ambitious in its
scope whilst also being critical and self-refl exive. It is
a great shame that British audiences did not get to see
the exhibition, but one hopes that this publication will
have greater reach.
Even though they share similar structural features
and both are publications pertaining to exhibitions,
British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet and Grand National are very different books. The former is the catalogue
published to accompany the touring exhibition of the
same name, which over a period of fourteen months
during 2010–11, travelled to four locations across the
UK.2 British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet contains an
introductory note on the exhibition title, one essay by
each of the two exhibition curators, Lisa Le Feuvre and
Tom Morton, and, like Grand National, a compendium of
short texts and images relating to each of the exhibited
artists. The format of the catalogue is particularly useful
in that the short texts provide concise introductions to
the work of a range of artists practising today, while
the large colour images are of predominantly new and
previously unpublished works of art.
The British Art Show is an exhibition held every
fi ve years to assess the nature of art at that particular
moment, and Le Feuvre and Morton both address the
problem of writing about, and therefore historicizing,
art made in the ‘now’ in their essays. In addition to a
page-long note on the subtitle ‘In the Days of the Comet’, Le Feuvre and Morton expand on the metaphor of the
comet as a signifi er of the present: a momentary fl ash
that illuminates and inspires, that is then gone, and
which fades into memory. The comet can only exist
in the now and as Morton explains, ‘Art has only one
chance to be contemporary, a short spell in which it
exists within the culture in which it was made’ (11).
Morton’s and Le Feuvre’s essays are strikingly
similar in tone and content. Le Feuvre states that the
exhibition (and by extension the book) ‘does not
seek to entertain, educate or redeem’ (21), but rather,
to create an open space for questioning. This is to be
commended if the foundations of those questions are
clear, but both authors avoid making statements about
the art that they are purportedly introducing. For
example, Le Feuvre claims that contemporary artists
confound assumptions and expectations, but fails to
identify what these are. Morton similarly refuses to be
pinned down other than to state that the best art ‘never
settled on being just one thing’ (16). In their essays the
authors are clearly seeking to avoid reductive thinking
by refusing to state that particular artworks are about specifi c things, choosing instead to encourage their
readers to come to their own conclusions. While this
demonstrates curatorial and authorial consistency in
the aims of their project, this position is unhelpful for
new readers seeking to identify trends and dominant
themes in contemporary art.
Nonetheless, the short texts introducing artists
and their works do provide the interpretive narratives
that are missing from the essays. Written by Le Feuvre,
Morton and Elizabeth Manchester, the compendium
of artists’ images and texts will prove most useful
and enduring in this publication. The texts introduce
the work of individual artists, their aims, ideas and
working practices. Although the lack of footnotes and
references is annoying, the texts are useful in that they
provide an introduction to artists who may not yet be
the subject of longer scholarly writings, such as Duncan
© Association of Art Historians 2012 671
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Campbell and Olivia Plender. Interestingly, in the case
of Sarah Lucas, the text serves to rehabilitate her work
from moribund ‘yBa’ narratives as Morton traces the
genealogy of her recent works such as NUD CYCLADIC 3 (2010) through a history of art that features Pablo
Picasso, Louise Bourgeois, Henry Moore and Barbara
Hepworth.
In his introduction to British Art Show Tom Morton
argues that in today’s global art world, the terms
‘British’ and ‘Britain’ are ‘not terribly useful’ (12). He
suggests that artists are able to circumvent the problem
of the ‘nation’ by replicating the constant motion of
the comet. Working from a position that is clearly
infl uenced by Nicholas Bourriaud’s identifi cation of
the nomadic artist, Morton’s is a highly contentious
position because it does not take into account the
possibility that artists, often from ethnically diverse
backgrounds, have struggled to be identifi ed with and
included in the national purview.
Beyond Cultural Diversity: The Case for Creativity was
commissioned by Arts Council England and is
ostensibly a report refl ecting on the status of Black and
Ethnic Minority (BME) art and artists within Britain.
It combines essays on the presence of black and Asian
artists in Britain since 1945, with those addressing
the presence (or lack) of globally diverse art and
architecture in art history courses in British higher
education, and with those which seek to outline the
numerous debates for and against governmental policy
specifi cally aimed at BME practitioners. As such, the
book covers a lot of ground, and if at times the chapters
feel a little out of synchronization with each other,
it should be noted that this is because the aims and
aspirations of Arts Council England and the publisher
Third Text are not always in alignment.
Richard Appignanesi’s opening chapter provides
a useful ground map for those unfamiliar with the
debates and issues surrounding Britain’s institutional
policies addressing ethnic diversity and the arts.
He questions whose culture is being differentiated
by programmes and organizations that support
cultural diversity. As he astutely points out, ‘cultural
diversity is a meaningless tautological expression. It
tells us nothing except that cultures differ’ (5). Even
more importantly he asks why there is an offi cially
sanctioned domestic policy in Britain that allows
British citizens to be treated as other, different or
separate from British culture. A long-held criticism
of BME targeted policy has been that in identifying
groups as different, policy makers are also enacting
marginalization and separation based on race. If this is
the case, how is it possible to support ethnic minority
artists without falling into a trap that creates otherness?
In her essay, Roshi Naidoo argues that diversity policies
have created a climate in which diversity has been
reduced to spectacular displays of difference such
as the Notting Hill carnival; where it has become
synonymous with faith (that is, Islam); and where the
differences within ethnic groups have been nullifi ed,
so that diversity comes to mean something that defi nes
‘them’ from ‘us’. It would seem that the problem with
diversity policy is that it does not allow for difference.
The most impressive essay in this book is Jean
Fisher’s ‘Cultural Diversity and Institutional Policy’.
Taking UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on Cultural
Diversity as a starting point, Fisher argues that cultural
diversity concerns social justice, and for the latter
to be achieved, the former must be addressed in a
meaningful way. In order to drive home her point
that ‘managing’ cultural diversity is not an adequate
response, Fisher provides useful overviews of cultural
diversity policy documents in Britain since the 1970s,
carefully unpicking, for example, the Mayor of
London’s Delivering Shared Heritage (2005) document. While
she praises the document’s advocacy in promoting
the histories of black and Asian communities within
British history, she takes issue with how it defi nes the
notion of British heritage as though it were something
fi xed. Heritage, in this instance, like existing cultural
diversity policy, falls back on exclusionary tropes.
Fisher concludes that reform must embrace ‘a radical
review’ of the core philosophies of arts education and
heritage industries (68).
Richard Appignanesi’s conclusion, ‘What is to
be Done?’, presents a ten-point plan for creating a
‘culturally integrated future’ (123). Not all of the
authors or readers of this publication will agree with
all of Appignanesi’s suggestions, but they are worth
considering; if we are unhappy with existing narratives
of British art and history, and the representation or lack
thereof of Britain’s diverse communities within them,
then these ten points offer a starting point for future
debates.
Although Beyond Cultural Diversity may appear to be
anomalous in this survey of recent publications on
British art, prioritizing as it does a critical discussion
of governmental policy aimed at black and ethnic
minority artists and audiences, there is a compelling
argument why it should be read alongside the other
© Association of Art Historians 2012 672
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publications. Not only does it draw attention to the
ways in which race is addressed (or not) within
writings on contemporary art, like Grand National it also problematizes defi nitions of Britishness, and
what it means to be a British artist. Social politics,
issues of belonging, and local and global confl icts, are
variously identifi ed by Pooke, Danby and Appignanesi
as persistent concerns within contemporary art and
culture. These themes can also be found embedded
within the British Art Show’s artists’ texts, and read
together these books ask probing questions about the
nature and aspirations of art from the past thirty years.
To varying degrees they address and challenge how the
narrative of contemporary British art is, and has been,
constructed at the turn of the century, and as such will
be important resources for those studying the period.
Notes1 Grand National – Art from Britain, Vestfossen, Norway, 9 May–3 October
2010.
2 British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet, touring Nottingham, London,
Glasgow, Plymouth, 23 October 2010–4 December 2011.
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