| dc.description.abstract | Abstract
In this dissertation I take a close look at sculptures from the 1980s by four British sculptors: Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Anish Kapoor and Bill Woodrow. These artists are often categorized as "New British Sculpture". The thesis explores the nature of the four artists similarities and dissimilarities. I argue that the grouping done by art critics, both contemporary and later, has a highly questionable basis. I my opinion each of the four artists has a highly individual artistic signature, and grouping them together is to do their art an injustice. There are, however, certain shared elements in their art. I try to define what separates these artists from the artists working in both the previous and the later decades.
Based on an analysis of three works by each of the four artists from the 1980s I found a number of shared elements in their artistic expression. First of all, they all returned to the sculptural object. In British art in the 1970s there was a dematerialization of the art object while performance art and conceptual art held a strong position. Land and Earth art was also dominant, and in general the art in the 70s shared a sense of impermanence. Secondly, the artists emerging on the British art scene in the 1980s shared a tendency to produce an art that had strong associations with the human body and the sense of the organic. The sculptures they produced in the 1980s are sensual in both a symbolic and biomorphic manner. Their art can be seen as sexual and erotic, sometimes even traumatic, in a bodily sense. Through this I trace a line to the later abject art of the 1990s.
The 1980 s was also politically a turbulent decade, with Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990. In the art-world there was a strong contempt for Thatcher s conservative rule. Cragg, Deacon, Kapoor and Woodrow have been ascribed political ideas in their art. I argue that this is highly overestimated. They introduced a great variety of new sculptural material to the British art-scene, such as refuse found and collected in the streets and recycled consumer goods. Thus they questioned the consumer-society, but any clear political statements in their art are probably added later by art critics.
The purpose of this text is not only to show that these artists should not be categorized as a group, but also to trace a line to, and even find a starting point, for the bodily art created in later British art. | nor |