Young British Artists
also: YBA · Britart · Brit artists
The Young British Artists are a loose group of visual artists who began exhibiting together in London in 1988, when Damien Hirst organized Freeze, a student show staged in a Docklands warehouse. Most graduated from Goldsmiths College's BA Fine Art course in the late 1980s; their warehouse exhibitions, entrepreneurial self-promotion and confrontational work made them the dominant force in British art through the 1990s. Charles Saatchi bought and sponsored much of their output, showing it in his Young British Artists series and in Sensation (1997) at the Royal Academy. The name is now historical - shorthand for a generation that treated shock tactics, throwaway materials and media spectacle as artistic strategy, and for a market boom built on it. Key works include Hirst's shark in formaldehyde and Emin's My Bed.
Defining characteristics
- Confrontational subject matter - bodies, death, sex, bodily waste - presented without varnish
- Throwaway and non-art materials: household paint, resin, taxidermy, found furniture, the artist's own bed
- Large-scale installation and vitrine-encased specimens
- Brash, glossy finish and shop-window presentation
- Visual puns, tabloid imagery and slogans
Key figures
- Damien Hirst (b. 1965) — Organizer of Freeze and maker of the shark vitrine that became the icon of Britart
- Tracey Emin (b. 1963) — Confessional installation and embroidery artist; My Bed and the tent Everyone I Have Ever Slept With
- Sarah Lucas (b. 1962) — Maker of bawdy, punning assemblages from furniture, food and found objects
- Rachel Whiteread (b. 1963) — Casts of domestic and architectural voids; first woman to win the Turner Prize (1993)
Example works
- The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living — Damien Hirst (1991)
- My Bed — Tracey Emin (1998)
- House — Rachel Whiteread (1993)
Sources
- Young British Artists - Wikipedia encyclopedia
- Sensation (art exhibition) - Wikipedia encyclopedia