barrypierce's review against another edition
2.0
My dissertation for my history of art degree was based on the work of the Young British Artists. This book is a critical rebuttal of the work and influence of the yBas, hence much of my dissertation was dedicated to critiquing Stallabrass and his views. The following review is constructed from sections copied straight from my dissertation
It comes as an anomaly that there is so little critical scholarship on the yBas. In fact, when it comes to serious, academic discourse on the yBas there has been only one book written – High Art Lite (1999) by Julian Stallabrass. [...] Stallabrass’ book puts the yBas’ art within the context of a country rising from recession and the effect that had on the art market. However, most of High Art Lite is marred by the fact that Stallabrass openly detests the yBas. In fact, he refuses to even call them yBas and instead makes up his own term, ‘high art lite’, in order to describe their ‘low art’. ‘High art lite’ is ‘an art that looks like but is not quite art, that acts as a substitute for art’. He emits this stubbornness for 295 pages.
[...]
In High Art Lite, Stallabrass dismisses the application of theory to yBa art as ‘comic’ and suggests that the theories of Sigmund Freud, Jean-François Lyotard and Georges Bataille now had to be ‘cool and self-mocking’ if they were to be applied to ‘high art lite’ – as if this ‘low’ form of art was not worthy of having such names attached to it. This rejection of theory by Stallabrass could be one of the contributing factors as to why yBa art has been dismissed by some critics over the past three decades. Many of the yBas ‘play[ed] down the conceptual and theoretical sources of their work’ even though a vast majority of the artworks produced by the group was embedded with clear theoretical groundings.
[...]
In the last pages of High Art Lite, Stallabrass questions when the yBa craze will die. Writing in 1999, he could already observe ‘one or two clouds on the tendency’s horizon’. The sensation of the yBas did not last that long into the 2000s. Much like Young British Art’s musical counterpart, Britpop, the ‘movement’ eventually died out as the 90s died out. Most great art movements, no matter how famed or influential, usually only last a mere number of years. The yBas were no different. However, for their brief decade in the limelight, they not only dominated the British art scene, but they also revolutionised it.
It comes as an anomaly that there is so little critical scholarship on the yBas. In fact, when it comes to serious, academic discourse on the yBas there has been only one book written – High Art Lite (1999) by Julian Stallabrass. [...] Stallabrass’ book puts the yBas’ art within the context of a country rising from recession and the effect that had on the art market. However, most of High Art Lite is marred by the fact that Stallabrass openly detests the yBas. In fact, he refuses to even call them yBas and instead makes up his own term, ‘high art lite’, in order to describe their ‘low art’. ‘High art lite’ is ‘an art that looks like but is not quite art, that acts as a substitute for art’. He emits this stubbornness for 295 pages.
[...]
In High Art Lite, Stallabrass dismisses the application of theory to yBa art as ‘comic’ and suggests that the theories of Sigmund Freud, Jean-François Lyotard and Georges Bataille now had to be ‘cool and self-mocking’ if they were to be applied to ‘high art lite’ – as if this ‘low’ form of art was not worthy of having such names attached to it. This rejection of theory by Stallabrass could be one of the contributing factors as to why yBa art has been dismissed by some critics over the past three decades. Many of the yBas ‘play[ed] down the conceptual and theoretical sources of their work’ even though a vast majority of the artworks produced by the group was embedded with clear theoretical groundings.
[...]
In the last pages of High Art Lite, Stallabrass questions when the yBa craze will die. Writing in 1999, he could already observe ‘one or two clouds on the tendency’s horizon’. The sensation of the yBas did not last that long into the 2000s. Much like Young British Art’s musical counterpart, Britpop, the ‘movement’ eventually died out as the 90s died out. Most great art movements, no matter how famed or influential, usually only last a mere number of years. The yBas were no different. However, for their brief decade in the limelight, they not only dominated the British art scene, but they also revolutionised it.
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