Whose art is it anyway?

Niru Ratnam tackles the thorny question of what constitutes British — or should that be English? — art

In the past few months there have been two large-scale exhibitions showcasing British art. The first was the British Art Show at the Hayward Gallery; the second Modern British Sculpture at the Royal Academy. On show at the former were an elegant suite of works by Wolfgang Tillmans (born in Germany), a tapestry by David Noonan (Australia), the much-lauded film ‘Clock’ by Christian Marclay (America) and the delicate paintings of Maaike Schoorel (Netherlands). The latter boasted an impressive array of colonial plunder displayed next to British sculpture, a neat juxtaposition of Chinese bowls with works by William Staite Murray, Bernard Leach and Barbara Hepworth, and a Damien Hirst vitrine paired with a Jeff Koons vitrine.

In short, the striking feature about both shows was their recasting of Britishness as an all-encompassing globalised ideal. Equally striking was that, in terms of Britishness, this is all they had to say. There was no other assertion of what the ‘British’ in ‘British art’ might signify or how the works shown might be representative of a national character. This is odd given the starring role of ‘British’ in each exhibition title, and also because throughout the 20th century there were a number of competing theses about what constituted ‘British’ art. It would seem that we have come to some sort of theoretical cul-de-sac in attempting to articulate an argument about art and national character.

Most popular

Matthew Parris

What if Trump is just bonkers?

It’s not just the British who are struggling on this front. Indeed, the whole idea of the nation has been debunked by thinkers such as Benedict Anderson who has recast it as being something merely imagined. But as people still fight in the name of national sovereignty, the concept of nationhood is impossible to shake off entirely.