Counterculture UK – a celebration E-Book

Mark Sheerin

• Herausgeber: WS
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 545

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

What is counterculture?

– It’s an alternative lifestyle…
– The ideas that spread a revolution…
– A movement that changes the world…

This new collection of essays celebrates the incredible originality of British post-war culture. British Art, film, theatre, dance, literature and music have attracted international recognition, from the Angry Young Men to the Sex Pistols to Grayson Perry. Now gaming, the internet and social media enable creative communities to flourish and either fight for social justice – or just be entertained,.
Can we find the creative inspiration to succeed in a post-capitalist future?

‘…a wonderfully scholarly, readable and useful treat on the perils of labelling culture.’ – Helen Lederer, Comedienne

'It is the delinquents, deviants and subversive Counterculturalists that embody the true grittiness of British Culture. Subversive and volatile beings of anarchy, freeing the masses from the commodification of commercialised ‘expression’. Lurking in the margins, Mark Edwards in Counterculture UK - A Celebration, expresses the liberated and reactionary nature of dance to mainstream culture through his euphoric exploration of free expression, movement and identity. A sensitive reflection of the youth within the ‘northern powerhouse’ during socially and politically turbulent times that hyperextends itself to our present day discourses. As dance is digitised through meme and viral media so to does the Counterculturalist, constantly dancing their own revolution and liberating those who dare to be free in expression.' ***** – Kristian Gath, QWERTY Theatre

'This is a good introduction to a diverse range of topics, some of which, of course, will hold more interest than others, but I think overall most are dealt with in a knowledgeable and capable way. The writers know the subjects well enough that they can provide a clear overview as well as zoom in on the specific events or people who drove the movement or changes within the different fields and I like that we get different voices for each chapter. There is nothing new or revolutionary in the book and the examples provided for most of the topics would be well-known (to the point of mainstream...) to most people, but I still rather enjoyed reading the individual essays and seeing it in a context where the impact of certain events are shown on a variety of different stages.
The book can be used as a short starter to the different subjects. If you want to delve deeper, there is not much help in the book, but as long as you are aware of that from the outset, I doubt it will disappoint.' **** - JBM 1776 Amazon 100 Reviewer

'I found it interesting when the author questioned the idea of whether "counter culture" declines when it becomes the "culture" and is therefore no longer pushing against anything. I also enjoyed the way the author reminded the reader that the new technology of today's world really helps give space for people to explore their interests/fantasies and share them with others. I wonder where that will take us in the future?'     ****   –   Gemma Raishbrook, Amazon

Leseprobe

Editors

CHERYL ROBSON is a producer of several short independent films, most recently Rock ‘n’ Roll Island, selected for Raindance Film Festival. She worked at the BBC for several years and then taught filmmaking at the University of Westminster, before setting up a theatre company producing and developing women’s plays. She also created a publishing company where she has edited over fifty books including co-editing Celluloid Ceiling: women film directors breaking through. She has published over 150 international writers and won numerous awards. As a writer, she has won the Croydon Warehouse International Playwriting Competition and has had several stage plays produced.

www.cherylrobson.net

REBECCA GILLIERON is an editor with over 15 years’ experience working on fiction and non-fiction titles for independent publishers. Also a musician, she has played guitar, keyboards, drums and sung in a number of bands (Subway Sect, The Ghosts, Private Trousers), releasing three critically acclaimed albums on high profile UK and US labels with her band Wetdog and touring Europe and the US. Her next move is to start a record label ‘Southend Records’ in the town where she now lives.

First published in the UK in 2015 by

SUPERNOVA BOOKS

67 Grove Avenue, Twickenham, TW1 4HX

www.supernovabooks.co.uk

www.aurorametro.com

Counterculture UK © copyright 2015 Supernova Books

Production: Simon Smith

With thanks to: Ellen Cheshire, James Hatton, Alice Lumley, Tracey Mulford and Lucia Tunstall.

All rights are strictly reserved. For rights enquiries contact the publisher: [email protected]

We have made every effort to trace all copyright holders of photographs included in this publication. If you have any information relating to this, please contact [email protected]

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

In accordance with Section 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the authors assert their moral rights to be identified as the authors of the above work.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Cover design © 2015 Joe Webb www.joewebbart.com

ISBNs:

978-0-9566329-6-8 (print version)

978-0-9932207-1-5 (ebook version)

COUNTERCULTURE UK

– a celebration

edited byRebecca Gillieron andCheryl Robson

IMAGES

Sunflower Seeds, photograph by Mike Peel, http://www.mikepeel.net CC-BY-SA-4.0, 2010

My Heroes, photograph by Karl Steel, CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0, 2012

Pussy Riot, photograph by Igor Mukhin, CC-BY-SA-3.0, 2012

Jenny Éclair, photograph by J. Mark Dodds, CC-BY-ND-2.0

Omid Djalili and Susan Murray, photograph © Claire Haigh, http://www.clairehaigh.co.uk

Susan Murray and Marcus Brigstocke, photograph © Simon Goodwin, Goodwin Photography, http://www.goodwinphotography.co.uk/

Mark Edward, contemporary dance performance, two photographs © Idil Kazancel, 1996, p. 75

Mark Edward, contemporary dance performances, four photographs © Stuart Rayner, 2007, pp. 79, 94

Dance floor, Wigan Casino, photograph © Glenn Walker-Foster/Sharron Wolstencroft, 1975

Occupy London tent, photograph by Neil Cummings, CC-BY-SA-2.0, 2011 Sally Potter OBE, Rex Features

Bram Stoker International Film Festival 2103, photograph © Dean Geoghegan

Russell Tovey, photograph by Charlotte Pitchard, CC-BY-2.0, 2009

The Sex Pistols, Paradiso, Amsterdam, photograph by Koen Suyk, CC-BY-SA-3.0, 1977

Johnny Rotten on stage, Nationaal Archief, The Hague, CC-BY-SA-3.0, 1977

The Stratford Rex, Public Domain, photograph by PedleySD, 2008

Westfield, Shepherd’s Bush, photograph by Panhard, CC-BY-2.5, 2009

Stratford Centre, photograph, © Haley Hatton, 2014

The People Show No. 1, photograph, © Graham Keen, circa 1966

The People Show No. 128, photograph, © Zadoc Nava, 2015

Complicite rehearsal images, two photographs © Sarah Ainslie, 2015

The Last Adventures publicity image, © Hugo Glendinning, 2014

Tricia Cusden photograph, © Ronnie Temple, 2015

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Rebecca Gillieron and Cheryl Robson

1. ART

How the Rebels Got Rich

Mark Sheerin, arts journalist and blogger

2. BLACK AND MINORITY ETHNIC ARTS

Whose Voice is it Anyway?

oco Khan, writer and culture editor

3. COMEDY

The Changing Landscape of Comedy

Susan Murray, comedienne and MC for two of east London’s best comedy clubs

4. DANCE

Anarchy from the Margins and Free Expression

Mark Edward, performance artist and writer

5. DISABILITY ARTS AND ACTIVISM

Subversion within the Secluded

Penny Pepper, performance artist and activist

6. ENVIRONMENTALISM

A Way of Life

Paul Quinn, writer and editor

7. FEMINISM

Feminist Activism and its Achievements so Far

Hayley Foster Da Silva, digital broadcaster, F-word contributor, spiritual healer

8. FILM

Beyond the Mainstream: Counterculture Cinema

Ellen Cheshire, writer and lecturer specialising in film, TV, media and cultural studies

Subversive Cinema: Cult Film and the Rise of Film Fan Communities

Dr K. Charlie Oughton, academic and author

9. GAMING AND THE INTERNET

Online Culture Leaking Offline

Simon Smith, editor and software technical writer

10. LGBT CULTURE

What’s Wrong with Being a Freak Anyway?

Jack Bright, freelance writer and editor of various LGBT publications

11. LITERATURE

Underground Publishing: Blast and Bless

Ben Graham, author, music critic and poet

13. MUSIC

Mainstream Countercultures: The Ultimate Mix

Em Ayson, freelance writer and cultural commentator

12. NEGATIVE SPACE

Subculture in Boom-time London

Tim Burrows, writer, editor and musician

14. THEATRE

A Radical Loosening of the Fabric of Drama: Countercultural Performance from the 1960s to Contemporary Experimental Theatre

Dr Tim Garrett, academic and journal editor

15. YOUTUBE AND SOCIAL MEDIA

A New Platform

Bella Qvist, freelance journalist, editor and blogger

ENDNOTES

INDEX

Introduction

Rebecca Gillieron and Cheryl Robson

‘Tomorrow belongs to those who can see it coming.’

– David Bowie

What exactly is counterculture? The term suggests resistance to the norm and has come to encompass everything from alternative lifestyles to large movements advocating social change. Today, in advanced Western democracies, where mass protest seems to have little impact on government policy, the value of group resistance needs to be re-examined. Simultaneously, the ways in which individuals can have a voice and influence society have mushroomed as a result of the new digital age.

The term ‘counterculture’ was originally used by Theodore Roszak in The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and its Youthful Opposition (University of California Press, 1969). His analysis of technocracy and its opponents was highly perceptive, identifying a shift from social activism towards a ‘politics of consciousness’.

Alternative groups and communities have existed throughout the ages, including travelling communities who have created and followed their own traditions and cultures for centuries, regardless of larger society and its mores. Religious communities have also long existed, following a spiritual path laid down by founding members which is often critical of the fast pace and competitive nature of the outside world. A more recent example is the Findhorn community and ecovillage founded in 1962 in Scotland. Its community vision is to be:

‘… an international centre for holistic learning, helping to unfold a new human consciousness and create a positive and sustainable future.’1

Free Love?

In the UK, as with the US, the period associated most closely with the emergence of counterculture was the decade of free love – the swinging 60s. It wasn’t only the introduction of the contraceptive pill in 1961 – called ‘the greatest scientific revolution of the 20th century’ by some commentators – which made the sexual revolution possible, it was also the emergence of youth culture creating a self-identifying group of young people primed to rebel against the post-war lifestyle of their parents.

With the advent of psychedelic drugs, pro-peace issue-based campaigns like CND and the anti-Vietnam protests, and with an incredible cocktail of radical literature, art and music being created, this decade was an explosive time for ‘the underground’, which was the term used then to describe the countercultural scene.

In publishing, along with the many local publications being produced, Felix Dennis’ Oz magazine and London’s International Times were proving that, although apolitical and suspicious of mainstream political parties, counterculture was largely dominated by leftist, radical values. In art, Situationist artists were advocating lifestyles other than those promoted by capitalism (in the UK Ralph Rumney was the sole member of the London Psychogeographical Association) and the Fluxus movement was set on destroying the boundaries between life and art altogether – as documented by ‘Fluxbritannica’ at the Tate in 1994.

Pink Floyd were introducing trance to the nation and even the global phenomenon of the Beatles, whose origins were in purely crafted pop, embraced psychedelia with a vengeance in both their music and recreational drug-taking. In 1969, David Bowie’s first major hit ‘Space Oddity’ was inspired by Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey, and introduced us to the first of his stage personae, Major Tom. In 1972 he appeared on Top of the Pops in his androgynous Ziggy Stardust persona, singing ‘Starman’. The subsequent personae and changes in style which he adopted over the next four decades, refusing to be pinned down by critics, encouraged his fans to create their own styles and identities too. Bowie’s influence on performance, design and popular culture was far-reaching, as the recent exhibition at the V&A Museum in London testified.

Off-beat clubs like The Colony Room in Soho, established by lesbian Muriel Belcher in 1948, offered creative hubs for artists and writers such as George Melly, Isabella Blow, Jeffrey Bernard, Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud. Later a younger generation including Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and Will Self frequented the venue until it closed in 2008 – then the action moved on to the Groucho club nearby.

Throughout the country, the established repertoire of regional theatres was being challenged throughout the 60s and 70s with new works by political playwrights, advocating equality and social change. Today, political theatre is popular again, as audiences crave new visions for the future and satirical renderings of the present. Vicky Featherstone, Artistic Director of the Royal Court Theatre has said of a recent season of plays on the theme of revolution:

‘… in these plays you can’t hide from the questions that the writers are asking – about the individual’s ability to make change happen, about whether there is a political will to effect genuine change. They are often not party political, but they can be anti-establishment. And I think that comes from a huge unease about the status quo.’2

What Remains of the 60s’ Legacy?

While economists argue whether austerity is the right strategy to enable nations to rebound from the global financial crisis, working people in the UK, as elsewhere, bear the brunt of the downturn as governments reduce benefits and working tax credits. Coupled with youth unemployment, the gentrification of the inner cities and rising rents, few young people today have the means to leave home and live in rented accommodation while they develop their artistic skills and experience. But the internet is a new tool for millennials to use to express their discontent and creative talents. Whether grouping themselves with other like-minded individuals on Facebook, organising events or protests, or blogging about the absurdities of modern life, there is a generation of young people which is well aware of the failings of politicians and the insatiable, planet-despoiling greed of modern corporations.

Although the dominance of the corporate/industrial/military establishment might seem unassailable, resistance to its beliefs and values is growing. The desire for freedom from government meddling as well as from the ‘mindless regulations served up by Brussels’ is very widespread. For those demoralised by the uncaring nature and backwardness of recent government policies, journalist Zoe Williams writing in the Guardian asks if there is any point in resistance but still calls for us to re-imagine society:

‘There is nothing in the immediate term that we can do, but nothing here that we can’t use: the very baseness of this government’s agenda is the rock bottom from which we can finally ask fundamental questions about how we want society to look. Resistance is not futile: but it’s just the beginning.’3

Multicultural Britain

‘I think some of us submit to the dominant power or culture at the time. I think it is important to keep where you are from alive.’ – Lowkey, UK hip-hop artist

A dominant ‘way of life’ is not easy to identify in all parts of Britain today. In 2003, David Walliams’ and Matt Lucas’ Little Britain TV comedy series excelled at satirising small-mindedness. It parodied social types with fixed attitudes and limited beliefs. In 2010, the ‘scripted reality’ TV show The Only Way is Essex is exploring similar social types while making celebrities of its cast.

New Labour’s ideal of multicultural Britain has recently been discredited by members of the Left such as Trevor Phillips, former head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, as well as in the right-leaning press such as the Daily Mail. The mass migration of peoples caused by war, conflict and poverty is causing problems in all the countries of resettlement, as diverse ethnic communities live by different beliefs and values to their host cultures. In the Independent, columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown reflects wryly on Britain’s short-lived love affair with the exotic culture arriving on its shores, referring to the ‘3S’ model of ‘saris, samosas and steel drums’. As the growing popularity of UKIP attests, anti-immigrant sentiment is rife and will probably continue to grow while the economy is stagnant and resources scarce.

Despite this recent antipathy to multiculturalism, there are many artists whose cultural heritage has enriched British culture, such as the hijab-wearing, Muslim hip-hop rebels Poetic Pilgrimage, African theatre companies IROKO, Tiata Fahodzi and the black-led Talawa, MCs like Logic and the aforementioned Lowkey, comedians like Shappi Khorsandi and Omid Djalili, filmmakers like Steve McQueen and Gurinder Chadha, authors such as Hanif Kureishi, Zadie Smith and Andrea Levy, poets such as John Agard and Benjamin Zephaniah – to name a few. Not forgetting modern artists such as Tracey Emin and Chris Ofili, the Turner Prize-winning painter who was one of the few artists of African/Caribbean descent who was counted amongst the YBA movement of the 90s, and more recently Lynette Yiadom-Boakye whose portraits of imaginary black people were exhibited at the Serpentine Gallery.

There are many fantastic new venues worthy of mention, which aim to showcase culturally diverse work, such as London’s black-led Bernie Grant Arts Centre in Tottenham and Rivington Place in Shoreditch, as well as those which have already made their mark like Rich Mix in Bethnal Green and 198 Gallery in Brixton. They all make it their mission to highlight the experiences of different ethnic minorities within the UK and explore the complexities of multiculturalism today, as a hybrid of values and cultural preferences are created by third-generation immigrant communities. For some modern Muslim women, for example, wearing a hijab may be countercultural, because it rejects cultural imperialism and is an assertion of feminism on their own terms.

Social Justice

Another important legacy of the 60s is that the desire for social justice and equality continues. Wider than male/female equality, the drive for equality has motivated the LBGT community, ethnic minorities, disabled people and those with mental health issues to actively pursue their rights and to seek expression through the arts. One example of the arts positively influencing social discourse around disability was the installation of Marc Quinn’s marble sculpture titled Alison Lapper Pregnant on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square from 2005–2007.

As was demonstrated in the opening ceremonies of both the Olympics and the Paralympics in London in 2012, the UK has much to be proud of with regards to its diverse arts and culture. According to a 2013 report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, businesses in the arts and culture industry generated £12.5 billion in turnover in 2011, despite both arts funding and consumer spending on the arts declining. Acting as a huge attraction for tourism too, the aggregated estimate for tourist-related expenditure in the UK is around £856 million. Overall, the creative industries support around 5% of UK employment, 10% of GDP and 11% of exports.

The arts can have a transformative effect; they can help regenerate rundown areas throughout the country and bring vibrancy and colour back to communities. Although proven to encourage creativity, communication skills and a sense of well-being, arts education and arts subsidies are under constant attack in Britain today. Will future artists be able to achieve high quality work and risky innovation without the same level of investment? Will British cultural life be stifled as a result? Teenagers in suburban Britain now turn to their electronic devices for the latest countercultural experience rather than gathering together to make music or dance at an illegal rave.

The Digital Revolution

There is no question that the impact of the internet on the development of counterculture across the globe has been phenomenal. As a person who suffered tremendously due to his sexual orientation, it seems fitting that Alan Turing, who helped pave the way for the invention of the computer, also contributed to the rise of the internet and a new means for individuals to form instant communities at the touch of a button.

It is no exaggeration to state that Turing, together with other computing giants like John von Neuman,4 Konrad Zuse,5 Linus Torvalds,6 Dennis Ritchie,7 Ken Thompson,8 Sir Tim Berners-Lee9 – and then Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, contributed to the development of a model of information storage and communication – the internet – which hasn’t ‘just’ revolutionised virtually every aspect of the way we live our lives but has also literally saved lives. In the essay on social media in this book we find examples of lonely teenagers, often the victims of bullying, who have narrowly avoided suicide by forming friendships online. Within the essay on LGBT culture there are further examples from individuals who have found the strength to ‘come out’ and even meet partners online, citing the internet as their means to find social inclusion and overcome feelings of extreme isolation.

The internet not only allows artists, musicians, publishers, comedians, filmmakers, social or political campaigners and more to distribute their message or art form amongst far larger numbers than they might do otherwise, it also encourages individuals to participate in artistic, social or political communities.

Filmmakers can use YouTube to trial shorts of their film projects before seeking investment, musicians can use this channel and others (Myspace, then Bandcamp, then SoundCloud and so on) to launch careers or, alternatively, cement an underground cult status, and artists such as Banksy can cut out the middleman by setting up online galleries exhibiting their work. Those without the funds to rent a physical space to exhibit work can do so online. One example is LondonArt (www.londonart.co.uk), which claims to be the UK’s biggest online gallery, and was founded with the aim of bypassing the elitism of the art world and producing a more inclusive art-buying experience. Its founder, Paul Wynter, says,

‘Online galleries democratise the art-buying process. They make original art available to a wider audience and give more artists the opportunity to show their work.’

New Age: New World

Perhaps the real significance of the internet lies in the outlook it engenders: the positive influence of a new world-view, an ethos of information sharing, as well as a belief in the possibilities for reform that the internet creates. Another aspect of the internet has been the ability of individuals to challenge the propaganda of both governments and corporations by exposing lies and misinformation, the most famous platform being Wikileaks.

In his article ‘Wired to the counterculture’, published by Le Monde diplomatique, Philipe Breton joins those who draw parallels between the ethos of internet users today and the ideals that fuelled the original countercultural revolution.

‘The continuity is striking: the world of the internet is, in its own way, today’s counterculture – a space in which you can leave the “ordinary world” behind you. People who spend their time on the Net are in a sense the “drop-outs” of today, and many of the descriptions of young surfers remind you strikingly of Kerouac’s “desolation angels”. In the 1960s you “hit the road” to get a different, more spiritual sense of what life was about. Today you surf the “information highways” of the Net.’

This Collection of Essays

The value of this book lies is in its overview of the many strands of counterculture which have developed to express creativity, resistance and revolt. Britain’s countercultures weave a densely interconnected fabric and share a long and continuous history. The 1960s was definitely a high point for new ideas, innovation and technology, as well as being a time when young people had access to free university education for the first time and were testing boundaries and exercising new freedoms. And the will to disrupt and change society still lives on in younger generations, as evidenced by punk and the Occupy movement. Individuals continually create new subcultures, challenge the mainstream in new ways and new places, and they will keep doing so as they try to translate their desire to create a better world into action.

Visionary Vacuum

‘It’s the same each time with progress. First they ignore you, then they say you’re mad, then dangerous, then there’s a pause and then you can’t find anyone who disagrees with you.’ – Tony Benn

The lack of vision from our politicians and the limited choices on offer to young people today are disappointing. These may contribute to a desire to escape to other more exotic places, where the adventure of armed conflict or the certainty of religious dogma may seem more attractive. While government ministers berate the value of arts subjects, surely it is creative thinkers possessing both humanity and imagination who will envisage a better future for us all. Banks and financial institutions are now actively seeking to recruit graduates from the arts and humanities. They think these individuals may be better placed to understand that ethical values matter when making decisions about how to do business.

With declining influence on the world stage and the London financial hub being threatened by restrictions from the EU, the UK government is reorienting itself towards the burgeoning markets of Asia. To compete on an equal footing, countries like the UK may need to drive down wages and reduce benefits significantly. At the same time governments must invest to keep pace with and grow the new knowledge-based economy through design, innovation, new technology, sharing networks or more traditionally, selling services and expertise.

Paul Mason writing in the Guardian believes that the new ‘sharing economy’ will lead to a post-capitalist age in which information will be freely available and those seeking to limit or suppress it, such as the authorities in North Korea and China, will fail. He points out that information technology has already changed both when and how we work, that automation will reduce the need for workers even further and that cooperative ventures based on volunteers such as Wikipedia offer us a new model for the future.

‘The main contradiction today is between the possibility of free, abundant goods and information; and a system of monopolies, banks and governments trying to keep things private, scarce and commercial. Everything comes down to the struggle between the network and the hierarchy: between old forms of society moulded around capitalism and new forms of society that prefigure what comes next.’10

As we transition to a new age in which work becomes more collaborative, information is shared globally and capitalist market forces no longer hold sway, new countercultures will appear, grow, fade and disappear to help us come together and find our way.

ART

How the Rebels Got Rich

Mark Sheerin

Sunflower Seeds by Ai Weiwei, at the Tate Modern

Art can be dangerous. It can be subversive. Artists throughout the centuries have risked imprisonment and worse for expressing unacceptable ideas. Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is one well-known recent example, but in the last decade, many others have been arrested for upsetting established ideas such as American Spencer Tunick whose art involves photographing crowds of naked people in public places, Indian artist M.F. Husain who went into exile after receiving death threats for his portrayal of Hindu gods and goddesses and Zimbabwean artist Owen Maseko who was arrested for his critical paintings of Robert Mugabe. All this seems a far cry from the almost sanctified auction rooms in major cities where rare art works change hands for ever greater sums.

In the last fifty years, the collecting of fine art has become big business. It has led to the appearance of two art worlds: one in which sincere, committed artists struggle to get their work seen and heard, where academics and press officers write dense texts in support of well-researched and soul-nourishing exhibitions; then there’s the commercial side of the art world in which works by well-known artists are bought and sold for eight figure sums to end up in banks, city halls and the collections of the super-rich.

Art is the planet’s sexiest investment, a realm in which subversion and style are packaged up and sold to the one-percenters. (But that’s not as strange as it may seem. To get really, really rich, and to make really, really good art, both require a spirit of anarchy. Art and those who can afford it are seemingly made for one another.)

This chapter will look at subversive contemporary art in the UK since the 1960s. The last fifty years have been nothing if not interesting. In this time we have witnessed some of the most controversial artworks ever made. Artists have earned furious headlines in the popular press. Homegrown talents, rebels of the art world who are not afraid to challenge the dominant values of their time, have arguably become more famous than any of their indigenous forebears. And we must thank them for transforming Britain from a relative backwater of visual culture into a world leader with a capital to rival New York.

In this chapter we’ll look at the ways in which cutting-edge art became the mainstream and the way cutting-edge artists became the establishment. And we’ll look at how craft became cool, and how, using the web, crafters have created a worldwide movement. Along with the YBAs we’ll look at the Turner Prize and its impact on the nation’s consciousness. And we’ll look at those who make art on the street, and those who live on the social margins. We’ll also explore a traditional art movement, Stuckism, which bucks the trend for idea-based art and demonstrates that figuration and painterliness could be the most defiant qualities around. Finally, we’ll look at the opportunities for difficult artists to find an audience via the web and question the prevalent serious and often lo-fi aesthetic which is emerging with the newest generation of artists.

The current period of austerity in Britain has an intriguing antecedent. As late as the 60s the UK was still emerging from a period of post-war rationing and rubble. Art could go one of two ways: technicolour splendour with the psychedelic movement or the terse cerebral statements made by proponents of conceptual art. The former was drug-induced, music-influenced and utopian. What remains of the latter tend to be the monochrome photos or typeset record cards on which the most serious artists of their age documented their often fleeting actions.

Movement in Squares by Bridget Riley

What’s more, the two movements are roughly sequential, with an explosion of hope in the summer of 1967 followed by disillusion and a more militant approach to art. But although the current landscape owes a great debt to these two countercultural strands, few of the artists are household names. Perhaps only Bridget Riley, whose abstract paintings could well be described as ‘trips’, qualifies as a ‘famous psychedelic artist’. A 1971 appearance at the Old Bailey ensured the editors of the controversial issue of Oz magazine with a certain notoriety, but little lasting glory. Conceptual artists, and their close relations, minimalists, tended to fly under the radar.

Then, as now, however, it took little to bait the mainstream media. Feminism was, in the 1970s, perhaps the most subversive game in town. The ICA drew fire in 1976 by showing a six-part installation by US artist Mary Kelly about the birth of her own child. What irked the tabloids was the inclusion of a series of her young son’s dirty nappies. ‘Post-Partum Document’ took half the decade to make and the results are as cerebral as they are visceral.

In many ways the punk movement was anti-art. For subversion at the end of the 1970s one might find most of it in the growth of zine culture which, thanks to cheap photocopying, took off at the same time as British music got stripped down. The 80s were the last real years of the avant-garde. Academia was ablaze with debates about race, gender, sexuality and AIDS. Given this concern with identity politics it is perhaps no surprise that performance art, including theatre, dance and multimedia became what was called (by People magazine) the decade’s defining art movement. But given that live art is by definition by the few for the few, it is little surprise that by the end of the upwardly mobile 1980s, unless you were buying it, contemporary art in Britain was at its least visible.

Brit Art Hits the World Stage

In the economic upswing of the 1990s, artists were experiencing a moment of cultural confidence that felt both very new and very reassuring. Artists were taking control of their own careers, but doing so in the spirit of 1970s punk or the upwardly mobile 1980s: the DIY ethic and entrepreneurial streak of Brit art in the 1990s was a blend of the underground and a Thatcherite love of private enterprise. And like the Pistols at the 100 Club, there was one show which came to embody the zeitgeist. The name was ‘Freeze’ in 1988 and the venue was a warehouse not a gallery – the kind of place we had come to expect a rave, rather than an exhibition. The impresario, meanwhile, was an undergraduate called Damien Hirst. ‘Freeze’ was to hijack the art world’s imagination and send a fleet of cabs to ferry the capital’s influencers to the Docklands. Charles Saatchi came, notoriously set the precedent for buying work from Young British Artists, and a movement was born.

This was no longer the dead serious conceptualism of the 1970s. This was the overheated market-driven 1980s. If there was one creative endeavour in which we led the world it was advertising. And so an adman would push up and build demand for the most market-friendly generation of artists the world had so far seen. A businessman, albeit a highly creative one, rather than a critic or curator, was in the driving seat of art history, as Charles Saatchi liaised with the Royal Academy to stage a blockbuster exhibition of these new artists in 1997. ‘Sensation’, a word the former copywriter may have once used to describe, say, a soft drink, was now the byword for a group of artists so controversial they bordered on the offensive.

That show did what it said on the tin and the tabloid press, who once ignored art, wrote outrage pieces about Marcus Harvey’s portrait of Myra Hindley (overleaf), painted entirely in child’s hand prints and the equally disturbing child mannequins by Jake and Dinos Chapman, which traded noses for penises, mouths for anuses. It was a long way from, say, Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Myra Hindley by Marcus Harvey

By the time ‘Sensation’ was launched the Chapman Brothers and Tracey Emin had been brought into the fold. The number of great careers this show launched is remarkable. Some criticised the RA’s seal of approval, for what they saw as canny marketing by Saatchi. But we should remember that the collector has opened doors to the public for free in three different venues since 1985 and in 2010 tried to gift his £30 million collection to the nation. Saatchi also gets credit for helping to bring to life one of the most iconic artworks of the 20th century; Damien Hirst’s formaldehyde shark began life as an expensive doodle on the back of his proverbial fag packet. (But note: ‘The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living’ might have frightened a few children, but it will never pose a challenge to the state.)

YBA Dissent: More Than Just a Pose?

Though many were quick to judge the new Brit artists as attention seeking, celebrity hungry and lacking serious intent, there was still a certain political aspect to the YBA movement. 1997 saw the election of the first Labour government in eighteen years. Fashion, music and art came together in a way which enhanced British industry. Pop stars were invited to Number 10 and our headline-grabbing artists were hitched to the Cool Britannia brand. It was the first and perhaps last time a UK government would manage to co-opt what was still essentially a rebellious practice. Such was the importance of art to our national identity that money was found to build the Tate Modern (£134m) and London became the capital of the art world, with a number of young turks (including Gavin Turk) as the darlings of a global art media. And to think British art was once on the staid side. It is all too easy to believe a tale in which Sir Winston Churchill said he would ‘kick Picasso up the arse’. It would have astounded the great statesman to come across Tracey Emin’s unmade bed.

My Bed by Tracey Emin, at the Tate Gallery

But it wasn’t solely through political association that the movement was influential. It inspired other artists, outside their studios, not just in terms of the content of their work. Cliff Lauson, co-curator of the 2011 Tracey Emin retrospective at the Hayward Gallery, London, weighs up the legacy of the YBAs. ‘I think a number of the YBAs were quite subversive in the sense that they came from nowhere,’1 he says. ‘They were enterprising and established their own careers rather than depending upon the art establishment to accept them.’ He describes this as a kind of ‘institutional subversion,’ which is quite different from the political or artistic variety, in that the focus was on rejecting the traditional means of establishing yourself as an artist. These were the times to get an agent or a gallery to represent you, and target the major London galleries as the ‘be-all-and-end-all’. These emerging rebels of the art world stuck two fingers up at the art establishment and made their own rules.

Old Hands Cash In, New Talent Emerges

In the coming decade, the market would continue to throw up surprises. Damien Hirst bought back all his work from Saatchi in 2003 and in 2008 cut the dealers out of the loop by selling direct to his buyers with an auction at Sotheby’s. This was at once highly independent and ‘therefore hip’, and also deeply in bed with worldwide collectors. Hirst has said he makes art with whatever he finds at hand and in 2007, it was money which surrounded him as he brought a £50 million diamond encrusted skull into the world. UK art’s enfant terrible had just made the most expensive artwork of all time. It was radical, but not quite right. Sensing he could go no further in this direction, Hirst returned to painting in 2009 with a show at the Wallace Collection. It came under fire from many critics who questioned whether it was his fame rather than his talent for painting that had secured the show.

For the Love of God by Damien Hirst

Tracey Emin, meanwhile, was canny enough to maintain a drawing practice. In 2011 she was made Professor of Drawing at the RA. Works on paper and embroidery have underpinned the Margate artist’s career and put the seal on her 2011 retrospective at the Hayward Gallery. In 2012, Damien Hirst, who once said he’d never show at the Tate, did just that. In the year London hosted the Olympic Games, the city swung like it was 1997 all over again; the cultural Olympiad, which brought art to the rest of the UK, spelled a coming of age for a dynamic contemporary art scene which began back in the late 1980s.

But as artists got richer and more professional, the next wave made an attempt to kick against that. A new craft sensibility came to the fore following the millennium. And the Turner Prize threw up a shock result when it gave the 2003 award to a man best known for pottery, albeit vases with detailed and angst-ridden political decoration. Grayson Perry, also a cross dresser, picked up his £25,000 cheque with the words: ‘It’s about time that a transvestite potter won.’ As it frequently seems in the art world, anything seemed possible. And the UK media found a new British eccentric as Perry and his garish frocks appeared on prime-time TV. In 2013 he was widely celebrated for delivering cogent and accessible Reith lectures on Radio 4. His transition from rank outsider to national treasure seems to have been completed in no time. That’s how fast the art world, and the media, can absorb a foreign body and, if we’re being cynical, neutralise its threat.

My Heroes by Grayson Perry

Art Party Conference Says ‘No!’ to Tuition Fees

Thanks in part to Perry, there’s plenty of craft to be found in the art world today. His fellow Royal Academician, Bob and Roberta Smith, is, despite the confusing name, a down to earth sloganeer and a sign-writer. It could be said he’s an agitator, which gives a certain tension to his august position at the RA. He too has a performative persona whose work blends the personal and political. In 2013, with the help of funding from DACS,2 the CASS3 and the Art Fund,4 he established the Art Party Conference in Scarborough: a timely response to the hike in tuition fees at art school. Public enemy number one was former education secretary Michael Gove. Smith is moving things on and in 2015 he stood against Gove in the Conservative MP’s Surrey Heath constituency.

But art schools remain edgy places, and during his time as Secretary of State for Education, Gove had little time for them; the feeling was mutual. The rise of tuition fees to £9,000 a year looked like an attack on the humanities and sit-ins were staged in Goldsmiths, Chelsea and a number of other schools across the country. Fees could price out the working and middle classes and put off all but the well-heeled and most careerist. Vital, life-changing institutions could become finishing schools for upper class hobbyists. The revolutionary potential of our famous schools has been recognised too late. We perhaps didn’t know we had it so good, and Cool Britannia seems a distant memory. Bob and Roberta Smith, who has interests in philosophy and literature, is a much-needed champion for the arts in the broadest sense. We should be thankful he’s a Royal Academician, even if that’s not quite of a piece with the spirit of, say, May 1968.

Modern Craft: The Revenge of Skill

Which brings us back to craft which, compared with contemporary art, has previously had a cosier relation with tradition. But something is brewing in the workshops of middle England. In 2007-08 the Crafts Council toured a show of subversive craft called Deviants and in 2011 a further revelatory show devoted to technology, Lab Craft. So craft today is as likely to echo Meret Oppenheimer (who in 1936 produced his iconic furry tea cup and saucer), as it is to call to mind Josiah Wedgwood. We have seen pottery with no clear function (from Geoffrey Mann), virtuoso displays of 3D printing (from Zachary Eastwood-Bloom), vases inspired by QR codes (from Martin Eden) and ornaments which flirt with ugliness (from Justin Marshall). In seeming response to the conceptual world of art, craftspeople, with an undeniable skill, are putting a conceptual spin on their wares. This unsettles both the art versus craft hierarchy and denies the audience the functionality they have come to expect. And subversive craft has thrown up some big names: Richard Slee, Hans Stofer and, yes, you’d have to say Grayson Perry. So if conceptual thought and skilled practice are put in opposition to one another then what we are seeing is the revenge of skill.

Craft has even made it out onto the street; it’s no longer a purely domestic pursuit. Knitting, for example, now requires a touch of urban daring as well as skill and patience. This is the phenomenon known as yarn bombing. It’s the wool based equivalent of graffiti with taggers leaving knitted sleeves and tunics on everything from tanks to bicycle racks to fire hydrants. The results are colourful and cosy, even if legally this is a grey area. The pictures travel well online, so yarn bombing serves two groups: locals wherever it crops up; and a global community of like-minded craft fans. One of the better known practitioners is Lauren O’Farrell who uses graffiti knitting to tell ‘stitched stories’. Now that knitting is a leisure pursuit rather than a way of creating cheap clothing for the family, women are reclaiming the craft for self-expression. Threadymade founder, Sonja Todd, has even used cross-stitch to make a political statement. ‘I did a cross-stitch protest outside Downing Street for the campaign for electoral reform. I got members of the public to stitch a sampler saying, “Make my cross count.”’5

Most street art, which will be discussed shortly, majors on risk, heroism and personal brands. But a multicoloured scarf on a mailbox can puncture that pretension. So here we have an art trend which subverts another art trend which itself remains one of the most subversive on offer. If yarn bombing has a message it is ecological, polite and positive. Street knitting is an amusing juxtaposition. But the gentle takeover of public space can also be seen as part of the serious and radical Reclaim the Streets movement.

Knit the City by Deadly Knitshade

Re-envisioning Community Arts

It is unfair. But, like craft, community arts have long been frowned on by those with saleable careers. But if genius is a mainstream myth then collaboration and mass participation are the ways to bring about cultural change. (It’s worth noting the 2014 Turner Prize showed signs of wanting to dispel the notion of genius with the nomination of Ciara Phillips. The Glasgow-based printmaker is known for collaboration with other artists and printmakers.) In actual fact, most people who make art don’t give too much thought to the art establishment and are quite happy to sell work to friends or people in their locality. What is perhaps a very British convention is the Open House season, in which makers and artists scrub up their residences and invite interested people to come and browse. If you don’t mind showing off your kitchen at the same time as your art, this can be lucrative. Open Houses generate £1m in Brighton alone and the practice is going strong in Cambridge, Bristol and London also – to name just a few places which support this trend. And out of season these cities are on trend also with a number of pop-up galleries and artists with entrepreneurial streaks who are only too ready to sell direct to the public and cut out curators, critics, dealers and auctioneers. It must work since these places appear to thrive. (In Brighton one finds Gallery 40, in Cambridge there’s Cambridge Contemporary Art, and more…)

Dad’s Halo Effect by Ryan Gander, Beswick

But can community art ever be cutting edge and critical? Conceptual artist Ryan Gander, who in 2014 delivered a major new public statue in Beswick, Manchester, says, as long as we change the name, it can be:

‘I wouldn’t say it was community art, I’d say it was art for the public. There are lots of different terms and they all have different bearings, don’t they? And suggest different things…’6

Gander claims it’s a lot more difficult than working in a gallery:

‘Essentially it has to contribute to the history of art and be something in tune with your own practice and your own trajectory that you want to see exist in the world, like all art, but then there’s a million more things it has to do. It has to be motivational. It has to be non-elitist, it has to be all encompassing. It has to be good value for money. It has to promote discourse.’

The Turner Prize: Controversy and Column Inches

It’s worth looking again at the Turner Prize, that well-established prize on the cutting edge of culture. Tate Britain hosts it in their grandiose 19th century building. Channel 4 broadcasts it. The Daily Mail reports on it. Everyone in the country has heard of it (if not many could tell you the name of the latest winner). It has a reputation for sparking outrage. People complain that year after year conceptual art gets the nod, and not all of these people have even visited the Prize exhibition. But perhaps the most scandalous days of this £40,000 prize are behind us. Looking back over the years we find plenty of furore at the fact Chris Ofili was painting with elephant dung, that the Chapman Brothers had defaced a set of Goya etchings, and Emin’s bed remained unmade. These artworks got the country talking, albeit through the lens of a largely hostile media.

As Andy Warhol said: ‘Don’t pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.’ So if you can measure subversion in terms of column inches, the annual art Prize committee is doing something right. In 2002 Kim Howells, then culture secretary, famously branded the entire affair ‘cold conceptual bullshit’.7 And anything that annoys a government representative must be doing something right. It can seem at times as if the inaccessibility of the prize strikes an annual blow for the intellect, a quality which is quite absent in most other competitions. Even the Booker steers clear of experimentalism. And we won’t even mention structured reality television contests. It’s just such a shame that intellectualism has to alienate the man on the UK street.

But does the Turner Prize offer an accurate reflection of where the UK art scene is really at? It could be argued it was slow to recognise video and performance. In 2014, as mentioned, we saw only the first ever printmaker. It can seem the Prize nominees and winners are selected in an ivory tower. Nevertheless, those who do visit the Prize exhibition tend to get into the swing of things. The comments wall is one of the liveliest national forums for art debate, and it’s a rare chance to pick an art favourite at bookmakers William Hill. And yet it’s understandable that many artists, whose faces wouldn’t fit with the country’s most influential tastemakers, hate the annual hoopla. In 1993, musician, artist and prankster Bill Drummond launched the K Foundation and offered £40,000 to the worst artist in Britain. Rachel Whiteread collected the Turner Prize at the Tate and then collected Drummond’s Prize on the steps of the building. Yes, the Turner can seem elitist. No, its chosen exhibitions are not always the most accessible. But that is the difficulty of art in the 21st century and it requires a suspension of disbelief to enjoy.

Stuckism

Charles Thomson, father of the Stuckist movement

In recent years Tate Britain has been picketed by an art movement which champions figurative painting: the Stuckists. But in a sign of the weary times, in 2014, these mavericks didn’t even bother to protest in advance of the award: turning up only on press day and on the night of the award to voice their objections and giving themselves a couple of months off beforehand. The Stuckists have agitated against all the brightest and the best in the art world, who in turn do a sterling job ignoring voices of dissent. They call modern art a total scam and make an articulate case. The movement was set up in response to an outburst by Emin, who told then boyfriend Billy Childish he was ‘stuck’ in his artistic ways and the name itself also stuck. Childish founded the movement with poet and painter Charles Thomson. So now it is the energetic Thomson who leads the campaigning. Stuckist work mixes expressionism, pop and satire. Whether painting Tate Chairman Sir Nicholas Serota or, once again, Saatchi, they can be as caustic as any group of talented people left out in the cold. But their rejection of conceptual art and theory, must be called reactionary. They rally behind a 1999 manifesto and their avowed objective would seem to be turning the clock back, rather than smashing the mechanism. Indeed, Stuckist painter Ella Guru expresses scepticism about art’s power to subvert. ‘I don’t know if you can still be subversive nowadays,’ she says. ‘Modern art has degraded into gimmickry and shallowness.’ In our brief phone interview, she doesn’t miss a chance to brand the Turner Prize a ‘joke’. So, real subversion is off the 21st century menu in Britain, but, she points out:

‘There’s a Stuckist group in Tehran, and merely depicting a human figure in a painting is subversive. That’s where they’re really pushing the boundaries because they could be arrested for what they’re doing over there.’

Guru praises both the technical skills of her colleagues in Iran and the bravery they need to conduct life drawing classes in secret.

Outsider Art

If the Stuckists find themselves on the fringes of the art world, there are some artists on the fringes of society itself. If you make art with a severe psychiatric complaint or an address at HM Prisons you could consider yourself an outsider artist. Outsider art was first identified as an aesthetic value when French painter Jean Dubuffet coined the term art brut, raw art, in the 1940s. He would have been surprised to find that in the 21st century, artists of this type would be showing in major London galleries such as the Wellcome Collection and Hayward. A pop-up exhibition of outsider art even came to the commercial epicentre of Selfridges on Oxford Street. Established artists like Peter Blake have spoken of their admiration for outsider art. These days, many outsider artists have access to the web, to art schools, to life drawing classes. What the trajectory of outsider art tells us is that there is no outside in terms of contemporary art – and few outsiders.

Kate Davey, an outsider art blogger and curator comments:

‘I think there’s more of an acceptance of it now and the term itself is becoming increasingly blurred, so it’s very difficult to distinguish between outsider art and mainstream art.’ Nowadays outsider artists are liable to have trained at art schools and enjoy broadband connections. And when asked about the effect of recognition and sales, Davey adds:

‘It’s a really positive thing [for outsider artists] to have their work exhibited in high profile venues, selling their work has such a huge impact on their self-esteem and their confidence as artists and you know the fact that people are enjoying this type of art… yeah, I think it’s definitely positive.’8

Be that as it may, we are still back to a scenario where what was once considered dangerous and transformative, has been rendered safe and easily digestible. By money, by the media, and, it must be said, by an adventurous public.

Graffiti: Icons from the Street

The picture is also familiar in the urban realm where street artists have gone from rebellion to entrepreneurship in barely a decade, it seems. For those who grew up in the 1980s, graffiti, as it was once called, was one of the most exciting US imports. From stealing spray paint to breaking into train yards, there was plenty about this scene which broke rules and broke new ground. Wildstyle was a style of graffiti that was colourful, daring and – if one was not privy to youth culture and visual language – illegible. No less a personage than Norman Mailer even called it a bearer of occult meaning in his book The Spooky Art (2003). So the movement behind street art had depth and a lifestyle to go with it. As a truly urban art form, it was incomprehensible to councillors, train operators and surely the political classes.

But if you were to fast-forward to the present you would be shocked. Wildstyle graffiti is now sanctioned by some property owners and developers have even invited writers to decorate the walls of their hoardings. As such it has become a force for gentrification and rising house prices. Dangerous? Well, not any more. Hip-hop inspired graffiti of this sort is as likely to invite the attentions of a selfie-taker as it is the attentions of the police.

The history of train carriage art can be traced back to the 1920s in New York. So the history of street art as we know it today is relatively short. Evidence of the Wildstyle gangs reached the UK through the work of photographer Martha Cooper. The art form went mainstream here in Britain about the same time as hip-hop broke through. But whereas technicolour pieces and fluid tags were all about territory, political street art came to be nomadic and just as decentered as the online media outlets which report it.

Republican mural, Belfast

And perhaps the political dimension is the UK’s greatest contribution to urban art. Since the 1970s the two warring sides in Northern Ireland took their messages to the street in the form of highly charged murals. Some 2,000 of these artworks have been documented since the first Republican murals appeared in Belfast and Derry-Londonderry. The author was fortunate enough to view many of these works in situ, from where it could be seen that those in Bogside added a visual arts pedigree to Derry’s successful stint as UK City of Culture 2013.

Compared with radical social messages in a combat zone, stencil art can seem like a short cut. And that is where we are today. Although the stencil was first used in Paris in the early 1980s, it is ubiquitous in the UK thanks to the pioneering efforts of the world’s best-known anonymous artist, Banksy. Banksy, who has been painting street art since 1992 has made work in his native Bristol and as far afield as Los Angeles or the West Bank. His politically charged works risk censure as well as arrest.

Banksy mural, wall of The Prince Albert, Brighton

Using stencils has allowed Banksy to effect quick getaways and as a result he has never, to our knowledge, been caught or charged. Thematic targets have included the UK supermarket Tesco, the police, sweatshops, private property and even recently GCHQ and mobile technology. His work is raw, radical and really very valuable. Yes, this too sells at auction. The anonymous artist makes a lot of cogent points with wit and theatre. But it is debatable whether his work has subverted anything at all. You can buy Banksy prints for your middle class home, knock off Banksy canvases for your student digs, and, if you are a hedge fund manager you can buy walls which include original Banksy artwork wholesale. There are some very wealthy people collecting street art, as the success of galleries like Lazarides and Black Rat Projects can testify. And if these customers are not the very problem then who is?

But that’s not the only paradox surrounding the agitprop art of the man called Banksy. His solo show at Bristol’s City Museum and Art Gallery broke records for the venue. The enigmatic artist has also staged hugely popular exhibitions from London to LA. And one of his most celebrated pranks has been to take his own works of art and hang them in the UK’s National Gallery. In other words, he’s crowbarring his way into the mainstream art world. Nothing changed during his brief appearance on the walls of the best art gallery in the land, but a psychologist might say this was a piece of wish fulfilment. And well he might dream. Street art is so inoffensive these days that a US president has risen to power on the back of a poster campaign by famed street artist Shep Fairey and our current Prime Minister has presented said President with a piece of art by a UK street artist, Ben Eine. For the current crop of artists, whose works reach critical mass in places like Shoreditch, Berlin and Brooklyn, the street is really their shop window. The real business has come to seem like knocking out expensive prints in stores like Art Republic. Or like John Bargeman, for example, selling vinyl toys. And it is fair to say that if Shep, Eine or Banksy chose to ‘decorate’ the side of your house, your estate agent would be rubbing his or her hands with glee.

Tame Art Future: New Challengers

If all of this has made you depressed about art’s limited powers of subversion, try not to be too down. This tame art world is just the price we pay for a fairly liberal democracy. Art is recognised as a space to have your say. And although a paper like the Daily Mail might occasionally complain about contemporary art, most of the adult population is happy to ignore the goings on in galleries and performance spaces. Those most affected by art tend to be artists themselves or other people who work in the field: curators, staff in galleries, press folk, journalists, bloggers, armchair fans. For these people art needs to feel subversive even if it isn’t. To quote the late great poet Adrienne Rich, ‘Subversive has a certain charm/and art can really do no harm.’9 Perhaps art can subvert paradigms, but those tend to be paradigms in art, not government. This was demonstrated by a recent touring show from the Government Art Collection. It just went to show that cabinet ministers are not averse to a bit of modern or contemporary art. The Culture Minister (at the time of this perplexing exhibition) was Ed Vaisey. And he chose the edgy YBA, and Conservative supporter, (once again) Emin.

So with formerly radical artists in Britain now staunch members of the establishment, we have to look to other countries for examples of art which is risky and subversive. As mentioned previously, China’s Ai Weiwei, risks his life and liberty to make his art. For years he has been under close surveillance in his own home. All of which makes Ai one of the bravest artists on the planet. When you put your life on the line, it is more impressive than putting your latest piece of work on the line. In 2011 Art Review named Ai as the No. 1 most powerful person in the art world. (It made a change to see an artist top that list rather than a collector or a super-curator.) Ai’s most emblematic work is a series of photos he’s taken of his own right hand flipping the middle finger at various government buildings at home and abroad. This is confrontational, but is it really subversive? Well, the Chinese government appears to think so.

Meanwhile in Russia, three members of an all female punk band were jailed for disrupting a service at the Christ the Saviour cathedral in Moscow. The Russian president Vladimir Putin comes across as a traditionalist, so it should come as no surprise he’s no great fan of performance art. And this is a pity because Moscow is awash with jaw dropping art pranks which would earn official censure in most any country in the world.

Pussy Riot, in their trademark balaclavas