2011: Where the Hell Was Now?

2011 was a year when now was difficult to find. The YBA/heroic monetarist era was definitively over – though Tracey Emin was accorded a far better retrospective than she deserved at the Hayward (see image below right).

Yet whatever will be replacing the dominant art trend of the last three decades, The British Art Show – a vast five yearly survey of cutting edge contemporary art – felt very much not the place to be looking for it. The work, mostly by artists a decade or so out of college, was bright, attractive and entertaining, but a touch callow, like good student work that strays little beyond a comfort zone inhabited by other artists, curators and dealers. The playfully sensual works of zany Scottish artist Karla Black – also seen to good effect at the Turner Prize – involving mounds of earth and shattered bath bombs, were among a number of exceptions to the prevailing sense of complacent academicism.

The cult of youth was further trounced by the rapturous acclaim for major shows by two artists well into their seventies: Gerhard Richter (see image below) and Frank Stella.

The past, meanwhile, was in a state of flux as new displays at Tate Britain attempted to shake up the hallowed categories – Pop Art, Constructivism, Expressionism etc – through which art has been viewed over the past half century: placing artists in unlikely juxtapositions and digging little-seen works from the vaults. A similar spirit was at work in Haunch of Venison’s expertly curated The Mystery of Appearance which put a new spin on Post-War British figuration by setting top-notch work from the so-called School of London – Bacon, Freud, Auerbach et al – against the harder, sharper approach of pop artists such as Richard Hamilton. Poignantly Hamilton and Freud were the year’s two most significant art world passings.

The V&A’s blockbuster Post-Modernism (still with two weeks to go), which might have provided useful pointers as to where we’re going, created the impression that a concept that supposedly defines our era was largely a matter of clunky, instantly obsolescent architecture and funny-shaped teapots.

Among a welter of worthy historical shows, the RA’s Degas and the Ballet: Picturing Movement and Tate’s Miro were lavish surveys that didn’t serve their subjects quite as well as they might have done – both lacked some crucial spark.

Heading into less familiar territory, the RA’s Eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the 20th Century showed that country’s extraordinary impact on 20th-century image-making, with Capa, Kertesz , Moholy-Nagy, Brassai among a host of truly superb photographers. Painting Canada: Tom Thomson & the Group of Seven, still showing at Dulwich Picture Gallery, gave welcome space to a bunch of Canadian Post-Impressionists, the best of whose work retained a remarkable freshness and sense of engagement with nature. Even better, Building the Revolution, the RA’s gem of a show on post-revolutionary Russian architecture, was greatly enhanced by atmospheric photography.  

As to the year’s supposed show of shows, I haven’t yet seen Leonardo: Painter at the Court of Milan, but nothing in the pre-opening media barrage swayed me from my view that the Renaissance Man’s tiny painterly oeuvre is arid, mechanistic and lacking in real sensuality or passion. But, hey, I’m prepared to be persuaded otherwise when I finally see it.

2011 Highlight: There was loads of good stuff, but nothing really and truly rocked my world.

2011 Letdown: The fact that nothing really and truly rocked my world.

2012 Recommendation:  Jeremy Deller, Hayward Gallery, from 22 February to 13 May. First major survey for one of Britain’s more interesting younger artists.