Sculpture and the (re)Branding of Tradition in Saatchi's 'Newspeak: British Art Now'

The following is the abstract for my forthcoming paper at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, for:

The New British Sculpture: Reviewing the persistence of an idea, c.1850 – present

After a sustained period within which sculpture has been defined by its questioning of – or resistance to – tradition, the literature accompanying Newspeak: British Art Now, both in the catalogue, and, especially, in the ‘picture by picture guide’, suggests a re-engagement of sculpture with both the histories and traditions of the medium, not so much as an ‘overthrowing’ of previous generations, than a recalibration of the relationship between generations.

It is indeed the case that most of the sculptural work in Newspeak does refer/relate to some notion of ‘tradition’, whether this is through the employment of recognisably historical visual tropes, or of ‘traditional’ materials. The author/s of the accompanying text, however, manipulate the languages of art history and criticism in a way that creates an interpretative closed circuit, preventing further interpretation of the work at the point of its encounter with the viewer and (re)‘branding’ the work as ‘traditional’. The process of ekphrasis is both instantaneous and absolute. Thus, there is a curious shift in the nature of the experience of the work as cultural artefact, in that it is indicative of a culture within which the notion of ‘criticality’ is usurped by the imperative for instant translation and explanation.

This paper, then, addresses the appropriation of art-historical language in order to claim some re-engagement with tradition which is not necessarily evident in the work itself. The true cultural and historical significance (and value) of the work is compromised in the process of isolating closed interpretations. This is not to suggest that this re-engagement is not occurring at all, but rather that the terms under which it may be occurring are muddied by the appropriation of art historical languages.


    Systems House,  
    Radial Construction in Space II
    (2006)