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Painting and Sculpture of a Decade ’54-’64 Revisited

This 6000 word article, published in the special issue of Art History edited by David Peters Corbett and Lisa Tickner on 'British Art and the Cultural Field, 1939 - 1969', (April 2012, pp. 420-441) examines the ways in which the Tate Gallery’s 1964 exhibition, Painting and Sculpture of a Decade ’54-‘64’ marked out a key moment for contemporary art in post-war Britain, by reinforcing calls for improved government art funding and exposing the need for a museum of modern art in London. Exploiting sponsorship agreements with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, corporate backers, commercial dealers and museums in Britain, the research demonstrates how the show instantiated developing links between London’s and New York’s art worlds. It also proves that the exhibition, by using innovative design aesthetics devised by the Smithsons, generated extensive media and press attention, thereby attracting an expanding, younger and better-educated audience to exhibitions of contemporary art.

This article originated as a paper given as ‘Painting and Sculpture of a Decade ’54-64’ revisited’ at the ‘New Approaches to British Art 1939-1969’ conference held at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, in June 2010.

See: www.courtauld.ac.uk/researchforum/events/2010/summer/documents/BritishArt1939-69-Abstracts_and_Biogs_5_.pdf).

Commissioned as an article for the refereed Art History journal and peer reviewed, it also appeared in the online journal. See: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8365.2011.00893.x/abstract) and as a chapter in a book of the same title by these editors, 2013 ISBN 978-1-118-27584-9 (pbk) pp.222-243.

See: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/british-art-in-the-cultural-field-1939-69-lisa-tickner/1108930219).