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Young British Artists

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'''Young British Artists''' or '''YBAs''' (also '''Brit artists''' and '''Britart''') is the name given to a group of conceptual artists, painters, sculptors and installation artists based in the United Kingdom, most (though not all) of whom attended Goldsmiths College in London. The term Young British Artists is derived from shows of that name staged at the Saatchi Gallery from 1992 onwards, which brought the artists to fame. It has become an historic term, as most of the YBAs are now in their forties. They are noted for "shock tactics", use of throwaway materials and wild-living, and are (or were) associated with the Hoxton area of East London. They achieved considerable media coverage and dominated British art during the 1990s.

Comment
Critic Matthew Collings commented on the YBAs, when reviewing the show ''Brilliant!: New Art From London'', held at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 1995 [http://members.lycos.co.uk/exposuremagazine/yba.html]:

Nobody can quite sum up what they stand for. The advance publicity of ''Brilliant!'' presents them as cheeky cockneys and punk rockers oppressed by the Thatcher junta, dodging IRA bombs, living in squats, and making rough and ready art that screams with rage and isn't intended for pristine white gallery space, but for rough and ready warehouse spaces in London's cockney East End. In reality of course they are highly sophisticated formalists who desperately, and quite rightly, want to show in pristine white spaces like the Tate Gallery and the Walker Art Centre.

Origin
The core of the later YBAs originated in 1988, at a time when public funding for art was not readily available (and had been reduced by the Margaret Thatcher Thatcher government). A group of 16 Goldsmiths College students took part in an exhibition called ''Freeze (exhibition) Freeze'', of which Damien Hirst became the main organiser—as he was still in his second year at the college. Commercial galleries had shown a lack of interest in the project, and it was held in a cheap alternative space, a London Docklands admin block (usually referred to as a warehouse). The event resonated with the 'Acid House' warehouse rave scene prevalent at the time, but did not achieve any major press exposure. One of its effects was to set the example of artist-as-curator (in the mid 1990s artist-run exhibition spaces and galleries became a feature of the London art scene). In liaison with Hirst, Carl Freedman (who had been friends with him in Leeds before Hirst moved to London and was helping to make Hirst's vitrines) and Billee Sellman then curated two influential "warehouse" shows in 1990, ''Modern Medicine'' and ''Gambler'', in a Bermondsey former factory they designated Building One. To stage ''Modern Medicine'' they succeeded in raising £1,000 sponsorships from artworld figures including Charles Saatchi. Freedman has spoken openly about the self-fulfilling prophecy these sponsors helped to create, and also commented that not many people attended these early shows, including ''Freeze''. Established alternative spaces such as City Racing at the Oval in London and Milch gave many artists their first exposure. There was much ebryonic activity in the Hoxton/Shoreditch area of East London focused on Joshua Compston's gallery. In 1991 the Serpentine Gallery presented the first survey of the new generation with the exhibition ''Broken English'' in part curated by Hirst. It was not until 1992 that Saatchi staged a series of exhibitions at his gallery and devised the name ''Young British Art''. The first show featured the work of Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Mark Wallinger and Rachel Whiteread. A second wave of Young British Artists appeared in 1992-3 through exhibitions such as 'New Contemporaries', 'New British Summertime' and 'Minky Manky' (curated by Carl Freedman). This included Douglas Gordon, Christine Borland, Fiona Banner, Tracey Emin, Tacita Dean, Georgina Starr and The Wilson Sisters. The composition of the YBAs at their height is documented in the catalogue for the 1995 British Art Show.

The Saatchi Effect
One of the visitors to Freeze was Charles Saatchi, a major contemporary art collector and co-founder of Saatchi and Saatchi, the London advertising agency. Saatchi then visited ''Gambler'' in a green Rolls Royce and, according to Freedman, stood open-mouthed with astonishment in front of (and then bought) Hirst's first major "animal" installation, ''A Thousand Years'', consisting of a large glass case containing maggots and flies feeding off a rotting cow's head. (The installation was later a notable feature of the ''Sensation exhibition Sensation'' exhibition.) Saatchi became not only Hirst's main collector, but also the main sponsor for other YBAs–a fact openly acknowledged by Gavin Turk. The contemporary art market in London had dramatically collapsed in mid-1990 due to a major economic recession, and many commercial contemporary galleries had gone out of business. Saatchi had until this time collected mostly American and German contemporary art, (some by young artists, but most by already established ones.) His collection was publicly exhibited in a series of shows in a large converted factory building in St John's Wood, north London. Previous Saatchi Gallery shows had included such major figures as Andy Warhol Warhol, Philip Guston Guston, Alex Katz, Richard Serra Serra, Anselm Kiefer Kiefer, Sigmar Polke Polke, Gerhard Richter Richter and many more. Now Saatchi turned his attention to the new breed of Young British Artists. There was much concern when Saatchi divested himself of some of his earlier collection, since it had a significant (downward) effect on the value of some of the artists whose works he sold.

Becoming the Establishment: ''Sensation''
Saatchi invented the name "Young British Artists" for a series of shows called by it, starting in 1992, when a noted exhibit was Damien Hirst's "shark" (''The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living''). In addition to (and as a direct result of) Saatchi's patronage, the Young British Artists benefited from intense media coverage. This was augmented by controversy surrounding the annual Turner Prize, (one of Britain's few major awards for contemporary artists), which had several of the artists as nominees or winners. The Young British Artists re-vitalised (and in some cases spawned) a whole new generation of contemporary commercial galleries such as Karsten Schubert Gallery Karsten Schubert, Sadie Coles, Victoria Miro Gallery Victoria Miro, Interim Art, and Jay Jopling's White Cube, and Antony Wilkinson Gallery. With the advent of Tate Modern, and the Tate's ties with the Turner Prize, the whole of the British Art Establishment swung in line behind the Young British Artists very quickly. Hirst rapidly became an internationally recognised major artist, with shows in Europe and the USA. Most of the Young British Artists' major artistic works were owned by Charles Saatchi. A definitive exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art in 1997 called ''Sensation exhibition Sensation'', (containing much of his personal collection, and also shown in Berlin and New York) brought the initial period of the Young British Artists to an end: they had now become the establishment.

Post ''Sensation''
In Spring 2003 Saatchi opened a new gallery in London, housed in the County Hall, London County Hall building on the South Bank and the previous Saatchi Gallery in St John's Wood was closed. The new Saatchi Gallery initially exhibited the work of the Young British Artists, until his new interests were demonstrated in a series ''The Triumph of Painting''. On 24 May, 2004, a Momart fire in a storage warehouse destroyed some important works from the Saatchi collection, including the Chapman Brothers' ''Hell'' and Tracey Emin's "tent".

Social relationships
The Young British Artists from an early stage were more socially than aesthetically connected. Sarah Lucas has had relationships with, in turn, Damien Hirst, Gary Hume and Angus Fairhurst. Gillian Wearing had relationships with Mark Wallinger and Michael Landy. Tracey Emin had a relationship with Carl Freedman and then Mat Collishaw. Places where it would be possible to spot YBAs included the Groucho Club, St. Johns Restaurant and (in the early years) pubs around Hoxton, such as the Bricklayer's Arms. Hoxton is known as the heartland of conceptual art (i.e.Britart).

Criticism

For
Richard Cork (then art critic of ''The Times'') has been a staunch advocate of the artists, as has art writer Louisa Buck, and ''Time Out'' art editor, Sarah Kent. Sir Nicholas Serota has validated the artists by the nomination of several of them for the Turner Prize and their inclusion in the Tate collection.

Against
In 1999 the Stuckism Stuckists art group was founded with an overt anti-YBA agenda. In 2002 Britart was heavily criticised by the leading conductor Sir Simon Rattle, who was, in return, accused of having a poor understanding of Conceptual art conceptual and Visual arts and design visual art. Playwright Tom Stoppard also made a public denunciation, and Brian Sewell (art critic of the ''Evening Standard'') has consistently been hostile, as has David Lee (art critic) David Lee, the editor of ''Jackdaw''.

YBAs who had exhibited at ''Freeze''
* Steven Adamson * Angela Bulloch * Mat Collishaw * Ian Davenport * Dominic Denis * Angus Fairhurst * Anya Gallaccio * Damien Hirst * Gary Hume * Michael Landy * Abigail Lane * Sarah Lucas * Lala Meredith-Vula * Richard Patterson * Stephen Park * Fiona Rae

Other YBAs
* Fiona Banner * Christine Borland * Simon Callery * The Chapman Brothers - Dinos & Jake * Tacita Dean * Tracey Emin * Liam Gillick * Steve McQueen (artist) Steve McQueen * Chris Ofili * Marc Quinn * Jenny Saville * Georgina Starr * Sam Taylor-Wood * Gavin Turk * Gillian Wearing * Rachel Whiteread * Jane and Louise Wilson The Wilson Sisters (Jane and Louise)

See also
*British art *London arts scene *Stuckism *UK topics *visual arts and design

External links

- Letter from London: Sensation, contemporaneous review of the exhibition
- A critique on the "Britpack" by Liz Ellis
- The British Avant-Garde: A Philosophical Analysis, Deborah Fitzgerald, Furman University Category:Artist groups and collectives Category:British art Category:British artists de:Young British Artists

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