Young British art: the Saatchi decade

Abstract

In 1988 a new era of British art was born. Young artists started to produce exciting work that would soon take the international art world by storm. Charles Saatchi began supporting the work of this new generation of artists more than ten years ago and his gallery has played a pivotal role in letting their voices be heard. This work documents one of the largest collections of contemporary British art in the world. This volume provides a survey of this collection as well as an overview of developments in contemporary art. Arranged around a time-line that traces the social and political events of the past decade, the works are accompanied by selected examples of the vociferous and amusing media coverage that they have engendered. The book includes paintings, sculptures, photographs and installations by artists such as Damien Hirst, Rachel Whitehead, Gary Hume, Jenny Saville, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Marc Quinn, Chris Ofili and Sarah Lucas. It echoes the development of both the collection and the individual artists' work through quality reproductions arranged chronologically alongside relevant essays, reviews, articles and cartoons from each period. A large proportion of the works illustrated have been neither published nor exhibited beyond student shows.