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Deposit Guide Contact: email PATRONAGE, PROFESSIONALISM AND YOUTH: THE EMERGING ARTIST AND LONDON’S ART INSTITUTIONS 1949–1988 Alexander Massouras London Consortium Birkbeck, University of London Submitted for the degree of Ph.D. in Humanities and Cultural Studies 1 Declaration I, ALEXANDER MASSOURAS, declare that this thesis and the work presented in it are my own and has been generated by me as the result of my own original research. I confirm that: 1. This work was done wholly while a candidate for a research degree at this University. 2. Where I have consulted the published work of others, this is always clearly attributed. 3. Where I have quoted from the work of others, the source is always given. With the exception of such quotations, this thesis is entirely my own work. 4. I have acknowledged all main sources of assistance. 5. None of this work has been published before submission. Signed: ………………………………………………………. 2 ABSTRACT PATRONAGE, PROFESSIONALISM AND YOUTH: THE EMERGING ARTIST AND LONDON’S ART INSTITUTIONS, 1949–1988 [London: The London Consortium 2012] In 1949, the first Young Contemporaries exhibition presented work by art school students in London. In 1988, Freeze displayed the work of artists who became known as the young British artists (‘YBAs’). This dissertation offers a historical framework and a critical account of the concept of the ‘emerging artist’—developed during the intervening forty years—a term typically associated with Freeze and the YBAs. The dissertation offers a corrective to the widely held belief that an interest in young and emerging artists was a new development in the 1980s, by reconnecting the notion with much earlier roots in the 1950s. It also revises the term’s commercial connotation. ‘Emerging artist’ posits something yet to come, and is loaded with suggestions of investment and future value. These traits can be read as imprints of the marketplace. This research demonstrates that a focus on young artists’ work in fact evolved as a result of changes to education and public patronage that occurred during the expansion of the welfare state. The art market contributed to the phenomenon, but did not shape it alone. Alongside the historical account of these institutional changes this dissertation considers the relationship between characteristics associated with the emerging artist and those associated with creativity more generally. Judgments of quality and value are in part made institutionally: an artist’s worth is attested by passage through prestigious educational institutions, exhibition in respected galleries, and collection by public institutions and important individuals. But there remains a conflicting appetite for these artists to be ‘outsiders’, expressed in the discourse which frames and receives them. It is in the ‘emerging artist’ that these competing demands can be reconciled. This analysis concludes by framing the ‘emerging artist’ as a paradigmatic artist, with dual appeal both as institutional ‘insider’ and romantic ‘outsider’. 3 PATRONAGE, PROFESSIONALISM AND YOUTH: THE EMERGING ARTIST AND LONDON’S ART INSTITUTIONS 1949–1988 CONTENTS PAGE Abstract 3 Contents 4 Abbreviations 8 Acknowledgments 9 Introduction 10 Research Question 10 Research Context 11 Methodology 12 Literature Review 12 Outline 15 Timeline 16 I. The Generational Frame 17 The New Generation 19 The Art School Generation 20 Generation as an Art-Historical Tool 21 The Meaning of ‘Generation’ 24 Neophobia 26 ‘Young Artists’ as ‘Emerging Artists’ 27 II. William Coldstream and the Professionalization of Art School Education 30 Background: Higher Education for the Population 31 Public Funding and the Pursuit of Purpose 32 Summary: Full Time, Purposive Education 36 The Slade and the University: A Case Study 38 Art Education for Art Education’s Sake 42 4 Anxiety of Purpose: A Longer History 45 The Coldstream Report and the Autonomy of the Art School 49 Professionalizing via Academicizing 52 The Metamorphosis of Art School Awards 56 An Art School Career 57 Artist Teachers 58 The Reaction: Pedagogy Against the University 61 The Self-Taught Art School Student 62 The Blank Slate 64 III. Between the Art School and the Gallery: The Pedagogy and Reception of Young Artist Exhibitions 69 The Art School as Limbo 70 Pedagogic Shortcomings 71 Separation and Corruption 72 The Sinister Market and its Cultural Roots 75 The Market and the Amateur 76 Susceptibility to Success and Fame 78 Trial and Error 81 Avoiding Professionalism: The Slickness Taboo 82 ‘Professional’ as ‘Derivative’ 84 Performing Amateurism 85 Adapting Pedagogy 87 IV. The Young Contemporaries and Beyond: A Historical Overview of Exhibitions for Young Artists in London 1949–1988 92 Young Artist Exhibitions: Historical Background 93 The Young Artist as Amateur 94 The Mid-1950s: When Young Exhibitors Became Professionals 96 Roots of The Young Contemporaries 98 A Philanthropic Impetus 100 The Benefits of Nurturing for Sponsors and State 101 State Funding 103 A Warning with Precedent 104 Policy: Promoting the Future 105 5 The Art Market and the Rise of Young Artist Exhibitions 108 Context: An Art Market Boom 112 The Art School and the Exhibition Space 114 V. Collections: The Growth of Public Patronage for the Young Artist 119 Museums and Collecting Work of the Present Day 119 New Public Institutions 122 The Tate 126 The Story as Told by Trustee Meetings 128 Expressions of Ambivalence 130 The Changing Shape of the Tate Collection 132 The British Council and its Collection 135 The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the British Council 136 Other Factors 139 The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Tate 141 A Modified Landscape of Patronage 143 VI. The Image of the Artist and the Idea of Beginning 146 —Youth and the Avant-Garde 146 Youth and Progressiveness 146 Youth and the Avant-Garde 147 Romantic Desire for Absolute Originality 148 Young/Old and Emergent/Dominant 150 The Failure of the Avant-Garde and the Rise of Emergence 152 —Youthful Creativity and a Critical Taste for Early Style 153 Early Style for Critics 154 Early Style in Scientific Study 156 Early Style as Contingent 157 —The Market 158 Youth as Obsolescence 158 Pop Roots and American Youth 160 Future Value 161 Youth, Erasure and Beginnings 162 6 Conclusion 164 Works Cited 166 Appendices Appendix 1: Student Statistics unpaginated Appendix 2: Young Artist Exhibitions unpaginated Appendix 3: Acquisitions Data unpaginated Appendix 4: Acquisitions: Visual Account unpaginated 7 ABBREVIATIONS On its first use, a term will be stated in full. Below are abbreviations which recur throughout the thesis. B.A. Batchelor of Arts C.N.A.A. Council for National Academic Awards Dip.A.D Diploma in Art and Design F.B.A. Federation of British Artists I.C.A. Institute of Contemporary Arts N.C.D.A.D. National Council for Diplomas in Art and Design N.D.D. National Design Diploma R.C.A. Royal College of Art R.A. Royal Academy R.S.B.A Royal Society of British Artists U.C.L. University College London 8 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am very grateful to all those who have spent time on this project. I am indebted to Nigel Llewellyn for his advice and encouragement, and to Teresa Gleadowe and Vicky Walsh for their detailed feedback on early drafts. I am grateful to all who have given interviews or spoken to me about the topic, including Andrew Brighton, Jo Volley, Eileen Cooper, Derek Boshier, Stephen Chambers and John Hilliard. Thanks to Leverhulme and Tate, and to staff at Birkbeck Library, Senate House Library, Tate Library and Archive, Blythe House, the National Art Library and the Slade. Among them, Liz Bruchet at the Slade, Robert Winckworth at the U.C.L. Records Office, and Camelia Njemanze at U.C.L. Student Data Services were especially helpful. And lastly my thanks to Jessica, family and friends. 9 INTRODUCTION Research Question The ‘emerging artist’ is a popular subject, beloved of art magazines, exhibitions, television programmes and ‘coffee-table’ books alike. During this research, television series such as School of Saatchi and Goldsmiths: But is it Art? extended talent-spotting television formats to emerging artists.1 Phaidon published Creamier, the fifth in a series of books that promote 100 emerging artists.2 And columns dedicated to emerging artists continued to feature in art magazines: ‘Openings’ in Artforum, ‘Ouvertures’ in Flash Art and ‘Focus’ in Frieze to name but three.3 The frequency with which emerging artists are covered upholds the conventional wisdom that artists do indeed ‘emerge’. To assume that artists emerge is to assume they follow a certain narrative arc, and that their progress can be located in a predetermined story. This dissertation reconsiders the narrative of emergence and gives the ‘emerging artist’ concept a history. It provides two complementary accounts of the term’s development. An institutional history details how changes in education policy, the art market and public patronage contributed to a growth in the number and success of practising young artists in the second half of the twentieth century. A theoretical account then relates the identity of the emerging artist to an older image of the artist, and discusses relationships among youth, the idea of progress and the avant-garde. These two aspects—the institutional and theoretical contexts—are in tension. The first describes a professionalization of young artist ‘insiders’, defined by their increasingly institutionalized progress through schools and galleries and into public collections.