Mulholland - The cultural devolution: art in Britain in the late twentieth century

Jane Allan, Conrad Atkinson, Terry Atkinson, Frank Auerbach, BALTIC, Kirsten Berkeley, Michael Bracewell, Andrew Brighton, The British Council, Victor Burgin, Cabinet Gallery, John Calcutt, Steven Campbell, Sadie Coles, Collective Gallery, Richard Cork, Terry Dennet, The Very Reverend Ryan Doolan, Keith Farquhar, James Faure Walker, Lyndsay Fielding, Duggie Fields, Simon Ford, Leigh French, Lucien Freud, Douglas Gordon, Paul Graham, Althea Greenan, Jennifer Higgie, Damien Hirst, David Hockney, Stewart Home, Richard Hooker, Dean Hughes, Alexis Hunter, Dick Jewell, Lucinda Lax, Lisson Gallery, London Records, Marlborough Fine Art, Lucy McKenzie, Ray McKenzie, Jim Medway, Malcolm Miles, Letty Mooring, Alice Mulholland, Craig Mulholland, Ian Mulholland, David Musgrave, National Galleries of Scotland, Tom O'Sullivan, Graham Parker, Clive Philpot, Alex Pollard, Anthony Reynolds, Saatchi Gallery, Jon Savage, Peter Saville, The Scottish Arts Council, David Shepherd, David Shrigley, Ross Sinclair, Matthew Slotover, Polly Staple, Linder Sterling, Tate Gallery, Joanne Tatham, Transmission, Rob Tufnell, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Martin Vincent, John A. Walker, Gary Webb, Jack Wendler, Nell Wendler, White Cube, Whitechapel Gallery, Anthony H. Wilson, Elaine Wilson, Women's Slide Library, Peter York.

The Cultural Devolution primarily focuses on the indeterminate relationships between institutions and practical/theoretical shifts in the British artworld from 1975 to the end of 2000. These developments are explored in relation to the momentous political upheaval during the last years of the Callaghan administration following the body blow of the 1976 International Monetary Fund crisis, and the revolutionary ultraconservatism of the Thatcher government of 19791990.

Significantly, it was during this period that the British fine art establishment found itself under resolute attack from both the left and right for the first time since the Second World War. The IMF crisis led the Labour government to look at ways of 'devolving' high culture, advocating social democracy by making the Arts Council of Great Britain financially and ideologically accountable to 'the public'. Given that the British artworld was, at this time, highly dependent on public subsidy, the art and criticism of the period can only begin to be understood if read in relation to its cultural and economic revolutions. This is especially pertinent given that both the Labour government and the Conservative opposition were making populist claims, the Conservatives demanding that the Arts Council be dismantled so that people could choose their own art (if they could afford it). Callaghan's drastic economic experiments were accelerated under the first Thatcher administration, which cut public subsidy and encouraged private patronage. I demonstrate the ways in which the ideological change from Keynesian culturalism to monetarist populism generated and financed the new art of the era: from proto-Punk performance to postmodernist object sculpture. In part, then, this forms a necessary pre-history to Charles Saatchi's alleged dominance of the British art scene, charting the pedigree of the Young British Artists (yBas) of the late 1980s and early 1990s. This serves as a corrective to accounts of '90s British art which lack an historical basis for assessing it. It also presents a very different account of postmodernist art practice to that found in texts which draw heavily on American examples, particularly the October School's interpretation of postmodernism.

This book points to numerous contradictions emerging within the new art and criticism of the 1970s and '80s. In contrast, proponents of the triumphant critical postmodernism of the '70s arid '80s (the Semiotic Art, Structuralist Marxism, Feminisms, Poststructuralism and New Art History which are the subject matter of this book) sought to ensure that its powerful and culturally significant reactionary elements were excluded from the official pre-occupations of art history and theory. It is also my contention that critical postmodernist accounts of British art in the '80s suppressed the importance of forms of cultural practice not associated directly with institutionalized art. Furthermore, I understand that the pursuit of theory led critical postmodernists to deny historical contradiction. This critical amnesia allowed untold opportunism in the British artworld as yBas sought to displace critical postmodernism, characterizing it as an irrelevant and outdated academic pursuit, eternally stuck in its golden era of the 1980s. If the theory and art historiography of recent British art are to escape their present aesthetic relativism, a vast number of practices and debates have to be reconsidered.