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Art attack: how the YBAs changed the face of art today

Art has always been concerned with birth, life, sex and death. Their manifestation through time, space and colour form the primary concerns of the artist. So why does contemporary art incur such hostility and controversy? Art movements come out of what has gone before. Pop art, minimalism and conceptualism were modern art movements that mirrored society and its dominant themes, with artists working to comment on and challenge social values and public reactions.

The traditional subjective and humanist approaches to art, predominantly figurative or formal, no longer have resonance in a rapidly changing society. Realism, subjectivity and opticality have been replaced in the 1990s by irony, pragmatism and wit.

The generation known as Young British Artists (YBAs) were born between the mid-1960s and 1970s, and emerged from the art schools in the late 1980s. In these educational establishments major changes were taking place. They registered a reaction to the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who claimed that there was 'no such thing as society'. It was in this context that both teachers and students came together to consider contemporary life and culture head-on.

What was Britain really like? How could individuals express their beliefs and ideas in a physical form and manifest a set of attitudes by looking at and experiencing the world? In the forefront of these changes was Goldsmiths College of Art in London.

The vision of the principal and lecturers established another way of looking. They abolished traditional divisions between departments such as painting, sculpture and photography, and inculcated a belief in their students that from day one they were artists. A high level of critical debate and discussion took place around the students' work in seminars and tutorials. Diversity was celebrated, and a platform to announce new directions was established.

An air of optimism and enthusiasm existed in an otherwise cynical and material society. This was a reaction to the politics of the time that saw not only Goldsmiths but also other art colleges struggling to survive government cutbacks in funding, known euphemistically as 'rationalisation'.

From this, students emerged self-confident, with recognisable signatures and an entrepreneurial spirit, working collectively to promote themselves and their community of friends and artists. The work of these YBAs challenged the complacency of the establishment and upturned the curatorial agenda that existed at that time, much of which was to promote acceptable art forms in public and commercial spaces.

Damien Hirst achieved mythical status with the Freeze exhibition, which he curated in 1988. Partially funded by the London Docklands Development Corporation, sponsorship was given on the understanding that it would be of benefit to the community. With the LDDC Hirst negotiated the use of a building belonging to the Port of London Authority in Plough Lane to curate a show of his work and the work of his Goldsmiths contemporaries. The YBAs were born.

New alternative spaces provided the exposure this generation required. They worked collectively to promote themselves and would taxi gallery owners and collectors to see their work and others in the emerging galleries of London's East End: The Chisenhale, Matt's Gallery, The Showroom and Interim Art.

Not since Marcel Duchamp's urinal in the 1920s and Carl Andre's bricks at the Tate in the 1970s had art been so prominently featured in the mainstream and tabloid press. Like their predecessors, the YBAs used found objects and ready-mades, using quotation and deconstruction to express a cultural anxiety and make art that represented themselves and their relationship to society.

The relationship of Hirst, as artist, with another individual, Charles Saatchi, the collector, has had a huge impact on the history of postmodernism. Saatchi converted an old paint factory into a gallery in north London to show his collection of acquisitions from mainly young and previously unknown artists. Saatchi would buy up graduating students' work and was wealthy enough to hold on to it until its value increased. His own gallery would showcase the work.

With the YBAs, London became a centre of the international art world in the 1990s. It also became a source of export to the New York art scene and a magnet for New York gallery owners. Money makes the world go round and, as Hirst says, 'Art is about life and life is about money.' It is also about taking risks - something Hirst is not afraid to do. The costs involved in mounting an exhibition on the scale of his latest Gagosian show were considerable. Hirst took four years to prepare for it.

In 1995 Hirst won the Turner Prize and it was at this time that establishment hostility reached its peak. The Daily Telegraph denounced his work as 'an odious and disgusting scandal'. Perhaps this establishment hostility is based upon its own failure to raise consciousness, and to address the social issues and taboo subjects that are the concerns of the YBAs.

Perhaps it is the honesty and integrity with which this generation of artists attempt to make their work accessible to a wider audience that the mainstream press finds so threatening. The YBAs choose to deflate the importance of the artist him/herself with self-explanatory titles, using recognisable materials and objects to express their ideas about contemporary society. They aim to actively engage the spectator in the experience of looking.

The individual viewing in public objects of art that are not always easy to consume is bound to generate controversy, discussion and debate over what constitutes art today. It is the achievement of the YBAs to have reignited this question - and to have come up with some intriguing answers to it. Jo Nelson

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