This is Tomorrow

Twentieth-century Britain and its Artists

Michael Bird

• Publisher: Thames and Hudson Ltd
• Year: 2022
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780500777473
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

In This is Tomorrow Michael Bird takes a fresh look at the long twentieth century, from the closing years of Queen Victorias reign to the turn of the millennium, through the lens of the artists who lived and worked in this ever-changing Britain. Bird examines how the rhythms of change and adaptation in art became embedded in the collective consciousness of the nation and vividly evokes the personalities who populate and drive this story, looking beyond individual careers and historical moments to weave together interconnecting currents of change that flowed through London, Glasgow, Leeds, Cornwall, the Caribbean, New York, Moscow and Berlin. From the American James McNeill Whistlers defence of his new kind of modern art against the British art establishment in the latter half of the 19th century to the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliassons melting icebergs in London, he traverses the lives of the artists that have recorded, questioned and defined our times. At the heart of this original book are the successive waves of displacement caused by global wars and persecution that conversely brought fresh ideas and new points of view to the British Isles; educational reforms opened new routes for young people from working-class backgrounds; movements of social change enabled the emergence of female artists and artists of colour; and the emergence of the mass media shaped modern modes of communication and culture. These are the ebbs and flows that Michael Bird teases out in this panoramic account of Britain and its artists in across the twentieth century.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• About the Author
• Other titles of interest
• Contents
• Introduction: A moving train
• 1 Fireworks
• 2 Pushed by surroundings
• 3 Kimonos on the Clyde
• 4 Shadows in my room
• 5 Who’s afraid of the avant-garde?
• 6 Primitive mercenaries
• 7 Chamber of horrors
• 8 A new space to be in
• 9 Deep Britain
• 10 Storm and ashes
• 11 Curious liberty
• 12 A different kind of life
• 13 Cold War modern
• 14 Tomorrow today
• 15 Pop goes the easel
• 16 Square bashing
• 17 The longest revolution
• 18 Time is now
• 19 Shark market
• 20 Inside stories
• Postscript: The silence of mirrors
• Sources and further reading
• Acknowledgments
• Sources of illustrations
• Index
• Copyright