All Too Human - Diversity at Tate Britain

I went to the All Too Human - Bacon Freud and a Century of Painting Life exhibition at Tate Britain yesterday. The Spring and Summer have been full of other activities - and sunshine - and I suddenly realised the exhibition closes on Monday!

All Too Human explores how artists in Britain have stretched the possibilities of paint in order to capture life around them. The exhibition spans a century of art making, from the early twentieth century through to contemporary developments. London forms the backdrop, where most of the artists lived, studied and exhibited.

• This is the Guide to the Exhibition - room by room
• you can also download the large print guide which lists all the paintings and artwork

I'm not going to comment on the art as everybody has their own perspective and the reviewers from the newspapers have given it a thorough going over (see links to their reviews at the end).

Instead I'm going to comment on something that struck me this morning when reviewing the names of who was in the exhibition - and who was not.

Key points:

• it's an exhibition of c. 100 paintings by SOME of those considered by SOME to be leading modern British painters (i.e. made their names in the 20th century)
• it includes a significant number of works by Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon 
• it's about painters in Britain who represent 
• human figures, 
• their relationships and 
• their surroundings
• it has very few women painters. Notably Paula Rego gets a room to herself and there is a large painting by Jenny Saville - but other female painters are less notable than the chaps.
• there's an effort at diversity (as in 'tackle the checklist') - in terms of ethnicity - but it's not very persuasive. 

and it wholly misses a VERY notable point about diversity in relation to "British Painting" - see below

Diversity

It's very definitely an exhibition of paintings by people with very diverse backgrounds - although very little is made of this.

It hadn't really occurred to me before this exhibition just how diverse "British painters" in the 20th century were.

Map of locations: Blue = artist studios; Red = Art Schools; Green - galleries

List of locations of Artists Studios and who is linked to which London Art School

The art (mostly paintings) are by artists who had some sort of association with London - with some being members of the so-called "School of London" - and very many underline the diversity of nationalities in the capital - and in the field of painting in the 20th century.

So they include......

What kind of art do people like to buy online?

Is the type of art that people buy online the same as the sort of art that people like to create?

This post is going to look at:

• the similarities and differences between the type of art that British and American people buy online
• how this compares to the type of art that people like to paint.

It's important to realise at the outset that that neither the subjects that people search for or the subjects people like to paint are necessarily a sound indicator of the art that people like to buy.  For example, different subject categories of an online art gallery may have been different "view" and "buy" behaviours.

That's why it's interesting to get a perspective from a website (Artfinder) that is prepared to share data on what sort of art people actually buy.  The data in the charts below was collected by Artfinder and is based on sales figures from 1 January 2015 – 31 December 2015.

What type of art do people buy?

Based on sales data in 1 January - 31 December 2015 (Source: Artfinder)

Last week I was sent some charts and conclusions drawn by Art Finder - an art website that acts as an online gallery for people wanting to sell their original art on the Internet.

What do they like - and dislike? 

People in the UK and USA are very similar in relation to:

The John Ruskin Prize 2015: Shortlist

Thirty artists have been shortlisted for The John Ruskin Prize 2015. The Prize winners will be announced at the private view on 25 February 2016.

This is an annual art competition about drawing - with a theme. The Prize was established in 2012 to support emerging British artists. It aims to uphold Ruskin’s belief that drawing helps us see the world and its fragility more clearly.

The theme this year is Recording Britain Now: Society to re-assess their practice and focus on the prevalent social issues of 2015/16. 

In the same way that Recording Britain sought to map familiar townscapes and countryside under threat, this will be an invitation to engage with a society in rapid transition.

I published my post about The John Ruskin Prize 2015: Call for Entries back in June - and this set out some of the background to the Recording Britain now initiative associated with the Second World War.

“It is enlightening to compare the observations of our 30 finalists with those of the 63 artists commissioned by Sir Kenneth Clark (with funds from the Pilgrim Trust) to document Britain under threat during the Second World War. Creating an accessible online gallery from the V&A's historic Recording Britain collection and the contemporary imagery shortlisted for this Prize will make many more people aware of art's power to comment, provoke and urge action”.
Sue Grayson Ford, President, The Big Draw 

The John Ruskin Prize 2015: Short-listed Artists

Links below are to the 'about' pages on the websites of the shortlisted artists. These are:

• Timothy Betjeman -  graduated with a BA in Visual Art from the University of Chicago plus post-graduate diploma in Drawing from The Royal Drawing School
• David Borrington - His website says This website publishes latest artwork exploring strange unique analysis, of social political and current affairs.
  
• Julian Bovis - an Urban Landscape Artist who predominantly works in pen and ink on paper, producing large-format illustrations and limited-edition Giclee Prints. 
• Jessie Brennan - a London-based British artist whose practice explores the inter-relation between people and place, through drawing and dialogue. Last month she did a presentation of her project Regeneration - which describes the politics that led to the rise and fall of Robin Hood Gardens - from socialist-inspired post-war public housing to its eventual privation under neoliberalism

What’s highlighted are the dramatically different perceptions of the estate by academic/architectural institutions and the people who actually live there.

• Sally Cutler - a printmaker whose preferred medium is linocut. She's been developing a series of a series of heads of people living in different locations in the UK. Each head is a real person who lives in, works in or visits the region in the title.

Richmond, North Yorkshire Heads by Sally Cutler

Party Wall (2015)
Mixed-media.
copright Nathan Ford

• Nathan Ford -the blurb on his website makes for an interesting read. I've long been familiar with the amount of draughtsmanship and drawing that underpins his paintings - I always love looking at them. His work is above this bullet point - and is very different.