state of the nation: writing contemporary british art

© 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,


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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


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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


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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


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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


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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.

state of the nation: writing contemporary british art

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