Danny Pearson - Modern British Art

Art can be a painting, a drawing, a sculpture, almost anything. It can hang on a wall in a famous art gallery or it can stand high on top of a hill.

It can be made by a famous artist and be worth millions of pounds. Or it can be made by a small child in a classroom using a pencil and paper.

Art is many things to many people. In comparison to the rest of the world, Great Britain is relatively small, but some of the worlds greatest modern art has been made by British artists.

In this book we will look at some of the most famous British artists of the last few decades and find out where their art can be seen.

Many people may not be able to spot the artist Antony Gormley from a crowd but his work is world famous and often on a very large scale.

He is probably best known in Britain for his large sculpture in Gateshead, Newcastle Upon Tyne, called The Angel of the North.

At first, many local people were against it and thought it spoilt the landscape. That all changed when a stunt was unveiled one of Newcastles most famous footballers shirts had been made specially to fit the sculpture! The people of Newcastle loved it and, although the shirt didnt stay on for long, the peoples love of the sculpture still remains.

Almost all of Gormleys work is based on the human body. He often uses casts taken from his own body to make the pieces. The figures are made from materials that can withstand being outside in all weathers.

In 1998, a work called Another Place was installed at Crosby Beach, near Liverpool. Gormleys figures stand in different places up and down the beach, looking out at the horizon. The sea even comes in around some of the figures and they can be seen standing out of the sea. Again, like The Angel of the North, many of these figures were dressed up by local people and the public grew to love the artwork on show.

Gormley later made many more of these figures and took them on a tour around the world, placing them in famous cities, such as London and New York. The work was called Event Horizon and many people would walk around the cities trying to find the figures. Some were on the streets but others were on top of buildings and hidden from the main walkways.

He won the Turner Prize in 1994 with Field for the British Isles. This artwork was made up of 40,000 small, handmade figures. This work has also been moved around and it was even displayed in a church.

Anish Kapoor is an Indian-born British sculptor. He is another artist who likes to work on a very large scale. One of his most famous sculptures, Cloud Gate, can be seen in Chicago.

It is possible to walk right up to it and touch it. He wanted his art to blend into the citys landscape. By using a reflective surface, he could show the people of Chicago the wonderful and interesting landscape that they already had around them.

Kapoor often works with very bright colours. He was inspired to use such bright colours by the many colours of spices he saw in India.

He designed the ArcelorMittal Orbit, which is at the Olympic Park in East London. The tower, as well as being a piece of art, was used as a viewing platform during the London 2012 Olympic Games and there is now a restaurant at the top.

One of Kapoors largest works was housed at Tate Modern in London. Marsyas took up the huge Turbine Hall, stretching all the way from one end to the other.

In 2006, he created a piece of art called Sky Mirror, which was exhibited at the Rockefeller Center in New York.

Like Antony Gormley, Kapoor has also received a knighthood.

David Hockney makes his art in many different ways. He is a painter, stage designer and photographer, among other things. In the 1960s, he was involved in the Pop Art movement, which included many famous artists, such as Roy Lichtenstein, Peter Blake and Andy Warhol.

He was voted by fellow artists as the most important British artist of the 20th century. Hockney has made many works of art, but some of his most interesting work involved him taking hundreds of photographs and then joining them up to create a scene. He called these joiners.

He discovered this method of working by accident. He did not like photographers using cameras with wide-angle lenses and he used to take many Polaroid photos of his home and stick them together. As he looked at his photos that were stuck together, he thought they looked like they were telling a story of movement, as if the viewer were walking around in the scene.

What do you think?

Rachel Whiteread is one of Britains most famous female artists. She creates sculptures that are usually casts of objects and spaces.