Gary Hume

Last updated

Gary Hume
Born (1962-05-09) 9 May 1962 (age 62)
Tenterden, Kent, England
Education Goldsmiths
Known forPainting
Movement Young British Artists

Gary Stewart Hume RA (born 9 May 1962) [1] is an English artist. Hume's work is strongly identified with the YBA who came to prominence in the early 1990s. Hume lives and works in London and Accord, New York. [2]

Contents

Life and career

Gary Hume Snowman, 1996. Hume, Snowman.jpg
Gary Hume Snowman, 1996.

Hume was born in 1962 in Tenterden, Kent. He attended Homewood School. He graduated from Goldsmiths College in 1988. His work was included in both Freeze, an exhibition organised by Damien Hirst in 1988, and East Country Yard, a warehouse exhibition organised by Henry Bond and Sarah Lucas in 1990. [3]

Hume has become known for depicting everyday subjects using high-gloss industrial paints. [3] His earliest notable works are his "door paintings", life-size representations of hospital doors. These proved a critical success, being shown in Germany and the United States, as well as attracting the attention of collector Charles Saatchi. Hume's work was included in the 1995 exhibition Brilliant! , a showcase of work by YBA artists. In 1997, his work was included in Sensation , a touring show of the Charles Saatchi art collection at the Royal Academy, London.

Hume abandoned doors in the mid-1990s, turning to paintings in household gloss paint on aluminium panel, for these often used appropriated images, including pictures of celebrities (e.g. DJ Tony Blackburn) and animals. Their forms and colours are dramatically simplified, with people being reduced to just two or three colours. Snowman (1996), for example, is made up of three shades of red, showing a circle on top of a larger circle against a lighter background. At first, Hume used mainly bright colours, but later pieces have used more muted tones.

Around 2005, Hume revisited his Door pictures, this time anthropomorphising the doors, arranging them into pairs of lovers and giving them the titles The Couple and The Argument. [4] Hume's “Yellow Window,” [3] from 2002, broke records when sold at auction at Christie's (which is now selling some other pieces of his work from George Michael's collection). [5] The work inspired a later limited edition entitled "1000 Windows," produced for London's Tate Modern in 2013. [6]

Besides his London studio, Hume maintains a second studio in a converted barn on the grounds of a former chicken farm in New York's Catskill Mountains region. [7]

Liberty Grip, at North Greenwich, London, with (to left of cable car pylon), Anthony Gormley's Quantum Cloud, also part of The Line, in the background Liberty Grip.jpg
Liberty Grip , at North Greenwich, London, with (to left of cable car pylon), Anthony Gormley's Quantum Cloud , also part of The Line , in the background

Liberty Grip is a 2008 sculpture in bronze by Hume, modelled in three discrete sections using the arm of a mannequin as a template, [8] and exhibited at White Cube gallery in Bermondsey, London in 2013. [9] The sculpture is today situated on a riverside path on the east side of the North Greenwich in south-east London, where it forms part of The Line , a public sculpture trail that very roughly follows the path of the Prime Meridian as it crosses the River Thames. [10] [11]

Philosophy and approach to painting

In 2012, Hume made an exhibition titled 'Indifferent Owl'. Speaking about his work in 2011, Hume had stated, 'Where I live in New York, there's a wood. I heard an owl in the night. Next day I found one of those "Happy Birthday" balloons caught in the trees. It had almost deflated. I imagined the owl, utterly indifferent, watching the balloon float by as it slowly collapsed. That's how I see life. I'm the owl, totally disengaged as the balloon bobs by…' [12]

Water Painting, 1999, Tate Collection. Part of Hume's "Water" Series of paintings. Hume, Water Painting.jpg
Water Painting, 1999, Tate Collection. Part of Hume's "Water" Series of paintings.

Exhibitions

Hume represented Great Britain at the 1999 Venice Biennale, where he showed his Water series, a number of superimposed line drawings of women (again, these were gloss paint on aluminium). His work was the subject of a one-person exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery, London, in 1999. Later monographic shows of Hume's work were organised at the Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover, and the Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria, in 2004, and Modern Art Oxford mounted a survey show of his Door paintings in 2008. [2]

Recognition

In 1996, Hume was nominated for the Turner Prize, but lost out to Douglas Gordon. He was later awarded Great Britain's 1997 Jerwood Painting Prize. [13] Hume was elected a Royal Academician in 2001.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Young British Artists</span> Loose group of visual artists

The Young British Artists, or YBAs—also referred to as Brit artists and Britart—is a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London in 1988. Many of the YBA artists graduated from the BA Fine Art course at Goldsmiths, in the late 1980s, whereas some from the group had trained at Royal College of Art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tracey Emin</span> English artist (born 1963)

Dame Tracey Karima Emin is an English artist known for autobiographical and confessional artwork. She produces work in a variety of media including drawing, painting, sculpture, film, photography, neon text and sewn appliqué. Once the "enfant terrible" of the Young British Artists in the 1980s, Tracey Emin is now a Royal Academician.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Damien Hirst</span> British artist (born 1965)

Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist and art collector. He is one of the Young British Artists (YBAs) who dominated the art scene in the UK during the 1990s. He is reportedly the United Kingdom's richest living artist, with his wealth estimated at US$384 million in the 2020 Sunday Times Rich List. During the 1990s his career was closely linked with the collector Charles Saatchi, but increasing frictions came to a head in 2003 and the relationship ended.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saatchi Gallery</span> Physical and online contemporary art museum in Chelsea, London

The Saatchi Gallery is a London gallery for contemporary art and an independent charity opened by Charles Saatchi in 1985. Exhibitions which drew upon the collection of Charles Saatchi, starting with US artists and minimalism, moving to the Damien Hirst-led Young British Artists, followed by shows purely of painting, led to Saatchi Gallery becoming a recognised authority in contemporary art globally. It has occupied different premises, first in North London, then the South Bank by the River Thames, and finally in Chelsea, Duke of York's HQ, its current location. In 2019 Saatchi Gallery became a registered charity and began a new chapter in its history. Recent exhibitions include the major solo exhibition of the artist JR, JR: Chronicles, and London Grads Now in September 2019 lending the gallery spaces to graduates from leading fine art schools who experienced the cancellation of physical degree shows due to the pandemic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marcus Harvey</span> English artist

Marcus Harvey is an English artist and painter, one of the Young British Artists (YBAs).

Events from the year 1962 in art.

Karsten Schubert was a German art dealer and publisher working in London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Freeze (art exhibition)</span> Art exhibition

Freeze is the title of an art exhibition that took place in July 1988 in an empty London Port Authority building at Surrey Docks in London Docklands. Its main organiser was Damien Hirst. It was significant in the subsequent development of the Young British Artists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Darren Almond</span> English artist

Darren James Almond is an English artist, based in London. He was nominated for the 2005 Turner Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Norman Rosenthal</span> British independent curator and art historian

Sir Norman Rosenthal is a British independent curator and art historian. From 1970 to 1974 he was Exhibitions Officer at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery. In 1974 he became a curator at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, leaving in 1976. The following year, in 1977, he joined the Royal Academy in London as Exhibitions Secretary where he remained until his resignation in 2008. Rosenthal has been a trustee of numerous different national and international cultural organisations since the 1980s; he is currently on the board of English National Ballet. In 2007, he was awarded a knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours List. Rosenthal is well known for his support of contemporary art, and is particularly associated with the German artists Joseph Beuys, Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer and Julian Schnabel, the Italian painter Francesco Clemente, and the generation of British artists that came to prominence in the early 1990s known as the YBAs.

<i>Sensation</i> (art exhibition) 1997–2000 art exhibition

Sensation was an exhibition of the collection of contemporary art owned by Charles Saatchi, including many works by Young British Artists (YBAs), which first took place 18 September – 28 December 1997 at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The exhibition later toured to the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin and the Brooklyn Museum in New York City. A proposed showing at the National Gallery of Australia was cancelled when the gallery's director decided the exhibition was "too close to the market."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fiona Rae</span> British artist

Fiona Rae is a Hong Kong-born British artist. She is one of the Young British Artists (YBAs) who rose to prominence in the 1990s. Throughout her career, she has been known for having a portfolio of work that includes elements of energy, and complexity. Her work is known for aiming at expanding the modern traditions of painting.

Rebecca Jane Warren is a British visual artist and sculptor, born in Pinhoe, Exeter. She is particularly well known for her works in clay and bronze and for her arranged vitrines. The artist currently lives and works in London.

Abigail Lane is an English artist who works in photography, wax casting, printing and sound. Lane was one of the exhibitors in the 1988 Damien Hirst-led Freeze exhibition—a mixed show of art which was significant in the development of the later-to-be YBA scene of art.

Sarah Kent is a British art critic, formerly art editor of the weekly London "what's on" guide Time Out. She was an early supporter of the Young British Artists in general, and Tracey Emin in particular, helping Emin to get exposure. This has led to polarised reactions of praise and opposition for Kent. She adopts a feminist stance and has stated her position to be that of "a spokesperson, especially for women artists, in a country that is essentially hostile to contemporary art."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neo-conceptual art</span> Art movement

Neo-conceptual art describes art practices in the 1980s and particularly 1990s to date that derive from the conceptual art movement of the 1960s and 1970s. These subsequent initiatives have included the Moscow Conceptualists, United States neo-conceptualists such as Sherrie Levine and the Young British Artists, notably Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin in the United Kingdom.

Gregor Muir is Director of Collection, International Art, at Tate, having previously been the Executive Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London from 2011 to 2016. He was the director of Hauser & Wirth, London, at 196a Piccadilly, from 2004 to 2011. He is also the author of a 2009 memoir in which he recounts his direct experience of the YBA art scene in 1990s London.

Clarissa Dalrymple is an independent art curator who lives in New York, New York. Dalrymple is credited with having curated early exhibitions of contemporary artists in the United States including Christopher Wool, Ashley Bickerton, Collier Schorr, Haim Steinbach, Nayland Blake, Michael Joaquin Grey, Jorge Pardo, Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Gary Hume, Rachel Whiteread, Neo Rauch, Adam McEwen, Nate Lowman and Ryan Sullivan.

Julia Dault is a Canadian artist. She is best known for her abstract paintings and Formica and Plexiglas sculptures. She lives and works in Toronto.

<i>Liberty Grip</i> Sculpture by Gary Hume

Liberty Grip is a 2008 sculpture in bronze by English artist Gary Hume. The sculpture is today situated on a riverside path on the east side of The O2 at North Greenwich in south-east London, where it forms part of The Line, a public sculpture trail that very roughly follows the path of the Prime Meridian as it crosses the River Thames.

References

  1. Gary Hume RA (b. 1962). Royal Academy. Retrieved: 3 August 2021.
  2. 1 2 Gary Hume Archived 23 July 2018 at the Wayback Machine Matthew Marks Gallery, New York/Los Angeles.
  3. 1 2 3 Carol Vogel (20 June 2013), Finding Meaning in the Mundane: A Midcareer Survey of Gary Hume Paintings New York Times .
  4. Gary Hume: Carnival, March 12 – April 30, 2005 Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.
  5. Gary Hume (b. 1962) Yellow Window. Christies. Retrieved: 3 August 2021.
  6. Gary Hume, 1000 Windows, 2013. Retrieved: 3 August 2021.
  7. Randy Kennedy (16 August 2005), Billboard-size tributes to public art New York Times .
  8. "Gary Hume". The Line. Retrieved 6 August 2020.
  9. "Gary Hume: Liberty Grip (6 March – 21 April 2013)". White Cube. Retrieved 2 August 2021.
  10. "Gary Hume Liberty Grip, 2008". The Line. Retrieved 2 August 2021.
  11. Jury, Louise (11 July 2014). "New sculpture trail, The Line, to appear along east London's waterways". Evening Standard. Retrieved 2 August 2021.
  12. Fiona Maddocks, In The Studio: Gary Hume RA Magazine Winter 2011. Retrieved, 16 January 2012
  13. Gary Hume: Small Paintings, January 17 – February 28, 1998 Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.

Further reading