Richard Cork (born 25 March 1947) [1] is a British art historian, editor, critic, broadcaster and exhibition curator. He has been an art critic for the Evening Standard , The Listener , The Times and the New Statesman . Cork was also editor for Studio International. He is a past Turner Prize judge.
Richard Cork was educated at Kingswood School, Bath (1960–1964). He read art history at the University of Cambridge and was awarded his doctorate in 1978.
Cork was Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge from 1980–90, and the Henry Moore Senior Fellow at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London from 1992–95. He then served as Chair of the Visual Arts Panel at the Arts Council of England until 1998. Committees he has sat on have included that of the Hayward Gallery, the British Council's Visual Art Committee and the advisory council for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. He has also been on the panel of judges for the Turner Prize and other major art prizes. In 1995 he was a selector for the British Art Show.
Cork's broadcasting work includes reviews of art exhibitions for BBC Radio 4's Front Row, Night Waves on Radio 3 and The Green Room on Radio 2. He also regularly appears on the BBC Two art series The Private Life of a Masterpiece . He has curated exhibitions at the Royal Academy, Tate, Serpentine Gallery, and Hayward galleries in London and, elsewhere in Europe, in Paris, Brussels and Berlin. In Cork's 1978 exhibition, "Art for Whom" at the Serpentine Gallery, "all the work exhibited the idea of community and group experience-a principal of social integration..." (Gablik 12). Cork has a specialist interest in the Vorticist movement and his book on them was for some time the standard text on the movement. In 1995 Cork was given a National Art Collections Fund Award for his international exhibition Art and the First World War, held in London and Berlin. He is currently a Syndic of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
During late modernism, Cork opposed the practice of intellectual elitism derived from formalist abstraction. (Gablik 12) The late critic Peter Fuller (editor of Modern Painters) invented the term 'Corkballs' to describe his form of art criticism. Louisa Buck said Cork was among the "rare species" who search out the latest developments in contemporary art, in contrast to the conventional outlook of many of his colleagues, who "still feel that art should know its place, which is firmly on a plinth or in a frame." She described his dismissal from the Evening Standard (where he was art critic 1969–84): "on a black day for contemporary art, he was succeeded by the fulminating Brian Sewell." [2]
In 2012, Cork wrote "The Healing Presence of Art", an illustrated history of Western art in hospitals. [3] Cork is a patron of Paintings in Hospitals, a charity that provides art for health and social care in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. [4]
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.
Vorticism was a London-based modernist art movement formed in 1914 by the writer and artist Wyndham Lewis. The movement was partially inspired by Cubism and was introduced to the public by means of the publication of the Vorticist manifesto in Blast magazine. Familiar forms of representational art were rejected in favour of a geometric style that tended towards a hard-edged abstraction. Lewis proved unable to harness the talents of his disparate group of avant-garde artists; however, for a brief period Vorticism proved to be an exciting intervention and an artistic riposte to Marinetti's Futurism and the Post-Impressionism of Roger Fry's Omega Workshops.
Bridget Louise Riley is an English painter known for her op art paintings. She lives and works in London, Cornwall and the Vaucluse in France.
Keith Tyson is an English artist. In 2002, he was the winner of the Turner Prize. Tyson works in a wide range of media, including painting, drawing and installation. His artistic philosophy rejects the notion of a fixed self or a singular artistic style.
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".
The Stuckists Punk Victorian was the first national gallery exhibition of Stuckist art. It was held at the Walker Art Gallery and Lady Lever Art Gallery in Liverpool from 18 September 2004 to 20 February 2005 and was part of the 2004 Liverpool Biennial.
David Lee is an outspoken English contemporary art critic—condemning conceptual art in general and the Turner Prize in particular. He publishes and edits The Jackdaw magazine, critical of the contemporary art world.
Anthony David Bernard Sylvester was a British art critic and curator. Although he received no formal education in the arts, during his long career he was influential in promoting modern artists, in particular Francis Bacon, Joan Miró, and Lucian Freud.
Adrian Searle is an art critic for The Guardian, and has been writing for the paper since 1996. Previously he was a painter.
Louisa Buck is a British art critic and contemporary art correspondent for The Art Newspaper. She is also an author or co-author of books on contemporary art market.
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."
Sir Richard Sheridan Patrick Michael Aloysius Franklin Bowling(né Richard Sheridan Franklin Bowling; born 26 February 1934), known as Frank Bowling, is a British artist who was born in British Guiana. He is particularly renowned for his large-scale, abstract "Map" paintings, which relate to abstract expressionism, colour field painting and lyrical abstraction. Bowling has been described as "one of Britain’s greatest living abstract painters", as "one of the most distinguished black artists to emerge from post-war British art schools" and as a "modern master". British cultural critic and theorist Stuart Hall situates Bowling’s career within a first generation, or “wave” of post-war, Black-British art, one characterised by postwar politics and British decolonisation. He is the first black artist to be elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts.
Sir Nicholas Serota Makes an Acquisitions Decision is one of the paintings that was made as a part of the Stuckism art movement, and is recognized as a "signature piece" for the movement. It was painted in 2000 by the Stuckism co-founder Charles Thomson, and has been exhibited in a number of shows since, as well as being featured on placards during Stuckist demonstrations against the Turner Prize.
Outset Contemporary Art Fund is an arts charity established in 2003, and based in London, England.
Laura Ford in Cardiff, Wales, is a British sculptor. She is currently president of the Royal Society of Sculptors.
Alison Mary Wilding OBE, RA is an English artist noted for her multimedia abstract sculptures. Wilding's work has been displayed in galleries internationally.
Victor Arthur James Willing was a British painter, noted for his original nude studies. He was a friend and colleague of many notable artists, including Elisabeth Frink, Michael Andrews and Francis Bacon. He was married to Portuguese feminist artist Paula Rego.
Aaron Scharf was an American-born British art historian who contributed in particular to the history of photography in which he had developed an interest while studying at the Courtauld Institute. His investigation uncovered links between painting and photography, and evidence for artists using photography for reference and other purposes, as well as the way photographers with aspirations as artists referred to painting in their work. He thus pioneered a new field of art history when Pop Art and other movements in the 1960s were reincorporating the medium of photography and reference to popular photographic images, into mainstream artistic practice. Scharf popularised his study and discoveries with publication of his profusely illustrated hardback Penguin volume 'Art and Photography' (1968) and through his work at the Open University in producing innovative thematic educational videos on the history of photography and its relation to society.
The Other Story was an exhibition held from 29 November 1989 to 4 February 1990 at the Hayward Gallery in London. The exhibition brought together the art of "Asian, African and Caribbean artists in post war Britain", as indicated in the original title. It is celebrated as a landmark initiative for reflecting on the colonial legacy of Britain and for establishing the work of overlooked artists of African, Caribbean, and Asian ancestry. Curated by artist, writer, and editor Rasheed Araeen, The Other Story was a response to the "racism, inequality, and ignorance of other cultures" that was pervasive in the late-Thatcher Britain in the late 1980s. The legacy of the exhibition is significant in the museum field, as many of the artists are currently part of Tate's collections. The exhibition received more than 24,000 visitors and a version of the exhibition travelled to Wolverhampton Art Gallery, 10 March to 22 April 1990; and Manchester City Art Gallery and Cornerhouse, 5 May to 10 June 1990.
Work No. 227: The lights going on and off is an installation by British artist Martin Creed. As of 2013, it forms part of the permanent collection at Tate Britain. The installation is widely considered to be one of Creed's signature art works and has also been described as Creed's "most notorious work".