Blast to Freeze

by Causey, Andrew; Cork, Richard; Curtis, David

• ISBN13: 9783775712484
• ISBN10: 3775712488
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-02-15
• Publisher: Distributed Art Pub Inc

Summary

It was a sensation, indeed, when the young British artists took over the art scene in the 1990s. But what came before them? With works from more than 100 artists, Blast to Freezetraces the epoch-making art movements of an entire British century, from the outbreak of World War I to the collapse of the Soviet Union, beginning and ending with a decided break from the traditional. In 1914 a group of young British artists, the Vorticists, in their avant-garde journal Blast!, propagated a style that blended influences from French cubism and Italian futurism into an independent British modernism. In turn, mavericks such as Henry Moore and Francis Bacon are unthinkable without the British primitivists and surrealists of the 20s and 30s. The specifically British brand of pop art began with the legendary exhibitions of the Independent Group in the 50s, and in the 80s, new British sculpture emerged, represented by important proponents such as Tony Cragg and Antony Gormley. The YBAs, presented to the world in the exhibition Freeze, jointly organized by Damien Hirst and friends in the London Docklands in 1988, brings the survey to a close.

Table of Contents

Messages from the Patrons of the Exhibition	7	(1)
Sponsor's Foreword	8	(1)
Director's Preface	9	(2)
Acknowledgements	11	(2)
Lenders to the Exhibition	13	(1)
Introduction
Henry Meyric Hughes and Gijs van Tuyl	14
THE SHORT CENTURY
Robert Hewison
FOG IN THE CHANNEL
The British Dialogue With Modernism	16	(11)
1910-20 VORTICISM, FIRST WORLD WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH	25	(32)
Richard Cork
BLAST,ARMAGEDDON AND AFTERMATH	27	(33)
1920-40 PRIMITIVISM,ABSTRACTION AND SURREALISM	57	(48)
Penelope Curtis
DIRECT CARVING and the Notion of a "Modern British Sculpture" International or Insular? Modern or Traditional?	60	(6)
Jeremy Lewison
GOING MODERN AND BEING BRITISH
The Challenge of the 1930's	66	(41)
1940-50 Second World War, Isolation and Existential Concerns	105	(25)
David Alan Mellor
Apokalyptic Visions
British Art in the 1940's and 1950's	107	(26)
1950-60 Brave New Worlds, Abstraction and the Aesthetics, of Plenty	130	(39)
Christopher Stephens
"We are the Masters Now"
Modernism and Reconstruction in Post-War Britain	133	(6)
Anne Massey
Forbidden Conservations
The Independent Group, Modernism, Urban Reality, and American Mass Culture	139	(32)
1960-65 Pop, Op and Hard Edge	169	(43)
Tim Marlow
Open Situations
British Abstraction in the 1960's	171	(4)
Marco Livingstone
Pop Art	175	(39)
1965-80 Counterculture and the "New Art"	212	(41)
Andrew Wilson
Everything
A View on a Developing Counterculture in the Mid 1960's in London	214	(7)
Charles Harrison
A Crisis of Modernism	221	(20)
David Curtis
Artists' Film in Britain
Six Moments	241	(7)
Anthony Howell
British Performance
An Incorrect View	248	(7)
1980-90 Painting, Objects and Installations	253	(44)
James Hyman
The Persistence of Painting
Contexts for British Figurative Painting, 1975-90	255	(32)
Andrew Causey
The "New British Sculpture" of the 1980's	287	(5)
Richard Shone
Freeze and Its Aftermath	292	(5)
GENERAL THEMES
Nick de Ville
BRITISH ART SCHOOLS
And the Influence of Art Education in the Twentieth Century	297	(5)
Margaret Garlake
"STRANGE PATRONAGE"
Promoting Twentieth Century British Art	302	(16)
Norbert Lynton
THE ROLE OF THE CRITIC
Catalogue of Works in the Exhibition	318	(10)
Artists' Biographies	328	(23)
Bibliography	351	(5)
Authors' Biographies	356	(2)
Photo Credits	358