The Young British Artists, or YBAs — also referred to as Brit artists and Britart — is the name given to a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London, in 1988. Many of the artists graduated from the BA Fine Art course at Goldsmiths, in the late 1980s.
The scene began around a series of artist-led exhibitions held in warehouses and factories, beginning in 1988 with the Damien Hirst-led Freeze and, in 1990, East Country Yard Show and Modern Medicine. The acronym term "YBA" (or "yBa") was not coined until 1996 (in Art Monthly magazine). It has become a historic term, as most of the YBAs were born in the mid-1960s. They are noted for "shock tactics", use of throwaway materials, wild-living, and an attitude "both oppositional and entrepreneurial." They achieved considerable media coverage and dominated British art during the 1990s—international survey shows in the mid-1990s included Brilliant! and Sensation.
Many of the artists were initially supported and collected by Charles Saatchi. Leading artists of the group include Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin. Key works include Hirst's The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a shark preserved in formaldehyde in a vitrine, and Emin's My Bed, a dishevelled double bed surrounded by detritus.
Read more about Young British Artists: Revitalization of British Art Scene, Becoming The Establishment, The YBAs Since 1997, Personal Lives, Artists Exhibited in Freeze, Artists Exhibited in Brilliant!, Other YBAs
Famous quotes containing the words young, british and/or artists:
“Remember that the peer group is important to young adolescents, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Parents are often just as important, however. Don’t give up on the idea that you can make a difference.”
—The Lions Clubs International and the Quest Nation. The Surprising Years, I, ch.5 (1985)
“It’s simple: either you have discipline or you haven’t.”
—Edmund H. North, British screenwriter, and Lewis Gilbert. Captain Shepard (Kenneth More)
“Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A really great poet is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realise.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)