Lucky Kunst

The Rise and Fall of Young British Art

Gregor Muir

• Publisher: Aurum
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781845137663
• eBook ISBN: 9781845138332
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

These days artists like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin are major celebrities. But Gregor Muir knew them at the start; his unique memoir chronicles the birth of Young British Art. Muir, YBA’s ‘embedded journalist’, happened to be in Shoreditch and Hoxton before Jay Jopling arrived with his White Cube Gallery, when this was still a semi-derelict landscape of grotty pubs and squats. There he witnessed, amid a whirl of drunkenness, scrapes and riotous hedonism, the coming-together of a remarkable array of young artists – Hirst, the Chapman brothers, Rachel Whiteread, Sam Taylor-Wood, Angus Fairhurst - who went on to produce a fresh, irreverent, often notorious form of art - Hirst’s shark, Sarah Lucas’s two fried eggs and a kebab. By the time of the seminal Sensation show at the Royal Academy YBA had changed the art world for ever.

Index

16mm (Taylor-Wood) ref 1

20:50 (Wilson) ref 1

24 Hour Psycho (Gordon) ref 1, ref 2

Abandon Abandon ref 1

Acconci, Vito ref 1

Ackermann, Rita ref 1, ref 2

‘Acquired Inability to Escape, Divided. The Acquired Inability to Escape Inverted and Divided. And other Works, The’ (exhibition) ref 1

Adjaye, David ref 1

Allen, Keith ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4

Almond, Darren ref 1

Als, Hilton ref 1

Anderson O’Day Gallery ref 1

Andre, Carl ref 1

Anthony d’Offay Gallery ref 1, ref 2, ref 3

‘Apocalypse’ (exhibition) ref 1

Arefin, Tony ref 1, ref 2

Arnold, Skip ref 1, ref 2

Art Moda Biennale ref 1

Art Monthly (magazine) ref 1, ref 2

Artforum (magazine) ref 1, ref 2

Artscribe (magazine) ref 1

Atlantic (Taylor-Wood) ref 1

Atlantic Bar, The ref 1, ref 2, ref 3

Auerbach, Frank ref 1

Away from the Flock (Hirst) ref 1

Ayres, Gillian ref 1

Bacon, Francis ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4, ref 5

Balon, Norman ref 1

Bank (artists’ collective) ref 1

Bankowsky, Jack ref 1

Banner, Fiona ref 1

Barbara Gladstone Gallery ref 1

Barley Mow pub ref 1

Barnes, Mr ref 1

Barney, Matthew ref 1

Basquiat, Jean-Michel ref 1, ref 2

Batchelor, David ref 1

Baselitz, Georg ref 1

Bernard, Jeffrey ref 1

Beuys, Joseph ref 1

Bickerton, Ashley ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4

Bill, Simon ref 1

Bisard, John ref 1

Blair, Tony ref 1

Blake, Peter ref 1

Blimey! (Collings) ref 1

Bloomsbury Gallery ref 1

Blur ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4

Blyth, Scott ref 1

Blythe, Thomas ref 1

Bond, Henry ref 1, ref 2, ref 3

Borland, Christine ref 1

Bowery, Leigh ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4

Bowery, Nicola ref 1, ref 2

Bowie, David ref 1

Bradshaw, Philippe ref 1, ref 2, ref 3, ref 4

Brick Lane

artists in ref 1

description of ref 1, ref 2

Universal House ref 1

‘Brilliant! New Art From London’ (exhibition) ref 1, ref 2, ref 3

Bring Me the Head of . . . (Chapman & Chapman) ref 1

‘Broken English’ (exhibition) ref 1...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise for Lucky Kunst
• Title page
• Contents
• Introduction
• 80s: art school
• Year Zero: birth of the white cube
• Building One: a career decision
• Founder Members: Hirst, Jopling and Saatchi
• Icons: the shock of the new
• Penetration: the emerging scene
• Closing Down: recession
• White Cube
• Lucky Kunst: writer and curator
• Cologne
• New York: us and them
• Uptown: the evening before the morning after
• The Critical Gaze
• The Brand: did you just say YBA?
• The Atlantic
• Gilded Gutter: farewell to old Bohemia
• Bones on a Plate: the scene heads East
• FN: a death in the family
• Manhattan, Return: Hirst at Gagosian
• More Drugs Than Milk: welcome to Shoreditch
• Turner Prize: the roaring Nineties
• Eating Out: art, restaurants and fame
• Champagne Supernova: New Labour, Cool Britannia and Sensation
• Far Out East: life in Brick Lane
• Mad Tracey from Margate
• Comedown: the fall from grace
• Last Orders: in the firing line
• Childhood’s End: losing my religion
• Epilogue: hell
• Thanks
• Index
• About the Author
• Copyright