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Matthew Collings (born 1955) is a British art critic, writer, broadcaster, and artist. He is married to Emma Biggs, with whom he collaborates on art works. [1]
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Matthew Collings (born 1955) is a British art critic, writer, broadcaster, and artist. He is married to Emma Biggs, with whom he collaborates on art works. [1]
Born in London in 1955, Collings studied at Byam Shaw School of Art, and Goldsmiths College, both in London.
He began his career working at Artscribe first in the production department in 1979 and later taking over as editor, filling that role from 1983 to 1987, bringing international relevance to the magazine. In 1987 he received a Turner Prize commendation for his work on Artscribe. Collings later moved into television working as a producer and presenter on the BBC The Late Show from 1989 to 1995. In the early 1990s he brought Martin Kippenberger into the BBC studios to create an installation, and he interviewed Georg Herold while this Cologne-based conceptual artist painted a large canvas with beluga caviar. He gave Jeff Koons his first sympathetic exposure on British TV, and Damien Hirst was also introduced for the first time to the UK TV audience by Collings.
He wrote and presented documentary films for the BBC on individual artists, such as Donald Judd, Georgia O'Keeffe and Willem de Kooning, as well as broader historical subjects such as Hitler's "Degenerate art" exhibition, art looted in the Second World War by Germany and Russia, Situationism, Spain's post-Franco art world and the rise of the Cologne art scene.
After leaving the BBC, Collings wrote 'Blimey! From Bohemia to Britpop: The London Artworld from Francis Bacon to Damien Hirst,' which humorously chronicled the rise of the Young British Art (YBA) movement. Published in 1997 by 21, a new company founded by David Bowie, among a group of others, 'Blimey!'was described by Artforum magazine as “…one of the best-selling contemporary-art books ever." (Kate Bush on the YBA Sensation, Artforum, 2004) The article went on to say that Collings "invented the perfect voice to complement YBA: He makes an impact without (crucially) ever appearing to try too hard." The following year, Collings wrote and presented the Channel 4 TV series This is Modern Art , which won him a Bafta (2000) among other awards.
Collings wrote and presented a Channel 4 series in 2003 about the "painterly" stream of Old Master painting, called Matt's Old Masters. A book by the same title accompanied the series. Further Channel 4 series by Collings included Impressionism: Revenge of the Nice (2004) and The Me Generations: Self Portraits, (2005). Between 1997 and 2005, Collings presented the Channel 4 TV programme on the Turner Prize.
In 2007 he wrote and presented the Channel 4 TV series This is Civilisation. [2] In 2009 he appeared on the BBC2 programme "School of Saatchi" a reality TV show for newly trained UK artists.
In October 2010, he wrote and presented a BBC2 series called Renaissance Revolution, in which he discussed three Renaissance paintings: Raphael's Madonna del Prato; Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights ; and Piero della Francesca's The Baptism of Christ . [3] In 2014 he wrote and presented a 90-minute documentary for BBC4 on abstract art: The Rules of Abstraction considered early modernist beginnings by Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Hilma af Klint, and others, as well as contemporary continuities, ranging from Fiona Rae to El Anatsui. In the same year, Collings appeared in Frederick Wiseman's documentary, National Gallery composing and rehearsing a piece-to-camera on Turner's The Fighting Temeraire , for the documentary Turner's Thames, (2012), which Collings wrote and presented for BBC4.
Since 2015, he has been the regular art critic for the Evening Standard , replacing Brian Sewell, who died that year.
Collings’ ongoing series of drawings of an “alternative art history,” begun in 2020, has been a commercial success, with many thousands sold on Instagram.
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In 2019 Collings was picked as Parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party for the South West Norfolk constituency, but was suspended by the party a day later. [4] Collings called Lord Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of the UK, a “notorious hate-filled racist" after Sacks repeatedly condemned multiculturalism, repeatedly celebrated a violent annual march of illegal settlers against Palestinians in Jerusalem, and praised a book by Douglas Murray which suggested Enoch Powell didn’t go far enough in his 1968 Rivers of Blood speech (Murray writes that the speech might be thought by some today to be “understated”).
With his wife, Emma Biggs, Collings has curated many art exhibitions. These include an exhibition of Picasso's late works at the HN Gallery in London. The paintings were from the 1960s series of Painter and Model and Déjeuner sur l’herbe reworkings. According to the catalogue essay, written by Collings, the exhibition aimed to draw attention to Picasso's achievement as a manipulator of form rather than the popular myth of Picasso as a showman or lover or sensationalist genius.
Together Biggs and Collings create paintings based on intricate patterns. They have exhibited their work in London and abroad. [5]
The Turner Prize, named after the English painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist. Between 1991 and 2016, only artists under the age of 50 were eligible. The prize is awarded at Tate Britain every other year, with various venues outside of London being used in alternate years. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the UK's most publicised art award. The award represents all media.
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.
Gary Stewart Hume 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.
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.
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.
Civilisation—in full, Civilisation: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark—is a 1969 British television documentary series written and presented by the art historian Kenneth Clark.
Angus Fairhurst was an English artist working in installation, photography and video. He was one of the Young British Artists (YBAs).
Brian Alfred Christopher Bushell Sewell was an English art critic. He wrote for the Evening Standard and had an acerbic view of conceptual art and the Turner Prize. The Guardian described him as "Britain's most famous and controversial art critic", while the Standard called him the "nation’s best art critic".
Adrian Searle is the chief art critic of The Guardian newspaper in Britain, and has been writing for the paper since 1996. Previously he was a painter.
Matthew Slotover is an English publisher and entrepreneur. He is co-founder of Frieze, a media and events company, which now includes the Frieze Art Fair, frieze and Frieze Academy.
Waldemar Januszczak is an English art critic and television documentary producer and presenter. Formerly the art critic of The Guardian, he took the same role at The Sunday Times in 1992, and has twice won the Critic of the Year award.
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 her 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."
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, where there is also a Stuckism counter-movement and criticism from the 1970s conceptual art group Art and Language.
The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living is an artwork created in 1991 by Damien Hirst, an English artist and a leading member of the "Young British Artists". It consists of a preserved tiger shark submerged in formalin in a glass-panel display case. It was originally commissioned in 1991 by Charles Saatchi, who sold it in 2004 to Steven A. Cohen for an undisclosed amount, widely reported to have been at least $8 million. However, the title of Don Thompson's book, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art, suggests a higher figure.
This Is Modern Art was a six-part TV series written and presented by the English art critic Matthew Collings. It was broadcast in 1999 on Channel 4.
James Fox is a British art historian and BAFTA nominated broadcaster. Fox specialises in 20th-century art and is currently Director of Studies in History of Art at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
Russell Barnes is a British television producer and director, known primarily for documentaries about science and contemporary history. He was educated at Bedford Modern School and studied history at Christ's College, Cambridge.
ClearStory Ltd is a British independent television production company. Founded in 2010 by the film-makers Russell Barnes and Molly Milton, it produces factual programming, often in the history and science genres, and has explored provocative social issues through documentary formats, sparking controversies.
Michael Collins is a British author, journalist and television presenter.
Nick Fudge is a British painter, sculptor, and digital artist.
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