Art on Paper
11/04/2012 by Emma Featherstone
Our guide to the Young British Artists' books
Damien Hirst , the enfant terrible of British art, is being celebrated with a retrospective at the Tate gallery, running until 9 September. Attention-grabbing installations include his menacing shark suspended in formaldehyde - 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living' - and a platinum, diamond encrusted, cast of a human skull, 'For the Love of God'.
Hirst , and his 1980s clan of Young British Artists (YBA), are dually talented, with many turning their hands to prose. We give you the top YBA books to compliment your exhibition wanderings.
Damien Hirst
On the Way to Work (2001)
Hirst teams up with his writer friend, Gordon Burns, offering an insight to his skewed vision of the world. In this compilation of interviews spanning his first major exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1991 to late 2000, Hirst speaks enthrallingly about his work.
Damien Hirst
by Ann Gallagher (2012)
Accompanying the Tate exhibition, this is an enlightening survey of Hirst’s 25-year career. Curator Ann Gallagher provides an introduction, while there are new interviews and essays from art historians and critics. This illustrated book offers in-depth explanations, enabling the reader to become an expert on the veteran of confrontational art.
Tracy Emin
Strangeland (2006)
The candid artist’s autobiography adds detail and subtlety to the brash personal revelations her pieces have provided since the early nineties. This includes the sufferings of her childhood and the intimate details of her sex life. Notoriously, her dirty sheets went on display at the Tate, and her most recent London exhibition included one of her used tampons. She also details more poignant moments, such as her reunion with her estranged father.
Sarah Lucas
The Mug (2008)
Lucas is perhaps best known for receiving the highest price for any contemporary artwork in 1996- Charles Saatchi bought her 'Self Portrait with Fried Eggs' for £52,875. Art and poetry collide in this collaborative memoir between Lucas and punk poet, Oliver Garbay. The Mug is an abstract catalogue of the friends’ working processes.
Christine Borland
Bullet Proof Breath (2002)
Borland is preoccupied with the fraught relationship between science and history. The book is named after a blown glass sculpture made with spider silk. She offers a detailed examination of this and her other works produced around the same time.
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