High Art Lite: The rise and fall of the young British artist by Jullian Stallabrass

I requested this book through the library's 'more books' scheme, as it was originally recommend to be by Cath.

Key Points & Reflection:

• "all would be well with contemporary art if only it were less elitist" (page 1)
• Young British Artists (YBAs) Accepted term. Generation of artists
• "What artists have learnt from more sophisticated forms of popular culture is that the creation of an aura of activity can be everything" (page 3). Quote originally from: Liam Gillick, 'when are you leaving?, Art and design, 1995', special issue, British art in the 1990s, p81. Point for further research. 
• Were the YBA's a breakthrough into global new markets caused British art to become dominant? "The overtly contemporary flavour of the art, apparently breaking with the provincial air of much previous British work, or at least adding sufficient inflection to that character would allow it to appeal to an international market" Page 4. 
• YBAs had distinctive relation to the mass media and use material drawn from mass culture (page 4).
• Art market hibernation due to recession that began in 1989. 'Art market had been buoyed' Page 4. 
• Recession caused art market to plunge. Page 5

• A contrast to me - "only rarely has high art lite taken money or the market as its subject matter, and a few of the artists have commented upon the conditions of their own creation." A STRIKING EXCEPTION: 
• "Micheal Landy who, pursuing his interest in the mechanisms by which things are sold, made an exhibition at Karsten Schubert called Closing Down Sale in 1992. The gallery was filled with shopping trolleys and day-glo sale signs with their desperate messages  exhorting the viewer to buy with tales of economic woe" Page 7. This point is very intriguing and fitting with my own interests therefore, Landy is a point of further research. His use of such signs within a gallery remind me of what I am currently exploring within my studio work - with the breakdown of the price accompanying the sculpture in the studio/gallery. 

• Racheal Whiteread's House 1993 took on new political meanings when local councillors demanded its demolition. (Page 10). It's cost £50,000 which people thought would be better spent on real homes, as its placement was in an impoverished area of London. 

• Hirst's best known work - bringing animal corpses into a gallery. Shark in formaldehyde with title 'The physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living' (1991). (page 19) This is a contrast to the diamond encrusted skull we see in 2007 - market differences? 

• "In Britain, the fact that art has become for overtly like buisness has been due to the gradual, long-term withdrawal of state funding. Museums and galleries have become increasingly run on buisness lines, judged primarily by the numbers who are channelled through their halls. Museums and galleries have become prized venues for business wining and dining - the display of corporate largesse - and as we have seen, important focus points in urban regeneration schemes and land speculation." Page 278.  

Further research: 

• Micheal Landy Closing Down Sale, 1992.