Their brilliant careers - British art, various artists, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas

Art in America, April, 1996 by Lynn MacRitchie

The year 1995 was something of a time of reckoning for British art, or rather for the body of work produced by those described as "Young British Artists." Group and solo shows at home were bolstered by a British Council-organized appearance at the Venice Biennale and then by the opportunity to conquer America, or at least Minnesota, where the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis brought the year to a close with "`Brilliant!' New Art from London."

The eldest of the current generation of artists have been showing since the late '80s, at first in ad hoc spaces reached by the doughty few. "Freeze," famously curated by Damien Hirst in 1988 and featuring several of the "Brilliant" artists, was held in a warehouse in the east end of London. Soon those artists made the transition, along with younger colleagues, to the world of private galleries and then public venues in London, Great Britain and elsewhere in Europe. "Brilliant" brought their works to a major U.S. art institution--a well-appointed museum with a permanent collection against which they could be measured. The move from London to Minneapolis was challenging for artists, art works and British visitors alike, all of them experiencing some form of culture shock in the Midwest.

Selected for "Brilliant" by Walker curator Richard Flood were Henry Bond, Glenn Brown, Dinos and Jake Chapman, Adam Chodzko, Mat Collishaw, Tracey Emin, Angus Fairhurst, Anya Gallaccio, Liam Gillick, Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Michael Landy, Abigail Lane, Sarah Lucas, Chris Ofili, Steven Pippin, Alessandro Raho, Georgina Starr, Sam Taylor-Wood, Gillian Wearing and Rachel Whiteread. Since the focus was on London-based artists, the strong Scottish contingent seen in the British Council's Venice show was ruled out, as well as some whose closeness to the capital might have been thought to render them eligible.(1) Certain well-known Londoners were also excluded by Flood--Mark Wallinger is perhaps the most obvious example. Flood's selection for "Brilliant" was based on his knowledge of and commitment to a particular group of British artists built up over a number of years, beginning when he was still with the Barbara Gladstone Gallery in New York. Flood's liking for London and his desire to reflect the gritty side of its urban life both in the work selected and, more controversially, in the exhibition publicity and catalogue, set up a certain edge of expectation--that the work would be shocking, outrageous, the exhibition a kind of wild party--which the show itself did not deliver.

The exhibition began with some artists who have already received international attention. In the lobby was a work by Steven Pippin [see A.i.A., Mar. '94], a huge trailer hanging a few feet off the floor, which he lined with paper negatives and used as a pinhole camera to record its setting. It was unfortunately easy to fail to connect this piece with the rest of the show, and to walk past it without ducking under to look inside. The main exhibition space centered on the work of Damien Hirst [see A.i.A., June '94]. His vitrine The Acquired Inability to Escape, Inverted (1993), containing an office chair and table, a packet of cigarettes, a lighter and an ashtray, all suspended upside down, made a powerful centerpiece. There was also a spot painting and Dead Ends Died Out, Explained (1993), a wall-hung cabinet containing rows of cigarette ends laid out neatly on shelves, like entomological specimens.

Flood shied away from Hirst's "Natural History" pieces because he was afraid that the controversy which seems to follow these dead animals in formaldehyde would overshadow the rest of the show. The exhibited works were Hirst at his quietest. Their formal qualities were striking and their Minimalist and art-historical references obvious; they bypassed the speculations about life and death which the "Natural History" works inevitably induce. This was a pity, because these concerns constitute one of the strongest links running through this generation's art: Hirst's is merely one of its most evolved expressions.

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At the Walker, his work was teamed with pieces by Rachel Whiteread [see A.i.A., July '95]. Again the selection tended to be safe. The Whiteread works were small scale--a synthetic resin casting of a desk and the two-part, rubber and polystyrene Untitled (Grey Bed), 1992. Like the Hirsts, these came across as more formalist, more minimalist, than they sometimes appear, and the sense of human presence which is usually implied was somewhat muted.

The restraint of Hirst and Whiteread, at least in the Walker's selection, was disrupted by the work of Sarah Lucas. Her decision, when she was starting out, to use photocopied blow-ups of spreads from British tabloid newspapers to make works like Fat, forty and flabulous (1990), was based on her wish for maximum impact at the least expense, with no pretensions to any kind of formal considerations. Recent pieces such as "Get Hold of This" (1994-95), a series of pairs of cast arms in which one fist is upthrust in a universal male gesture of insult, continue this rough-and-ready approach. The plastic casts are garishly colored and left ragged-edged, and they refer to popular culture: the bright hues (green, red and pink here) are those of snooker balls. Flood told me in an interview that it was a matter of great importance to have Lucas's work--which he described as "the emotional glue of the show"--alongside that of Hirst and Whiteread. He expected it to "animate the institutional space with its hallmark homemade look," and indeed, it stood up remarkably well to the carefully crafted pieces of the other two, challenging their detachment with its very personal style.