Artscribe
Encyclopedia
Artscribe titled Artscribe International from 1985, is a defunct British contemporary art
magazine. It was notable for its commitment in the late 1970s and early 1980s to abstract art
, and for giving popular art critic Matthew Collings
his first break into contemporary art
.
. Faure Walker and Jones conceived the new magazine as a showcase of new British and American abstract modernist painting and sculpture as typified by the work of Patrick Heron
. Contributors included Adrian Searle
, Terence Mulloon, and Stuart Morgan
. In this first phase under Faure Walker, Artscribe was distinguished by the lively intelligence of its writing, with a certain range—early content included a long interview with artist R.B. Kitaj (an outspoken champion of figuration) and a sophisticated description of the performance art
scene in the United States
and Europe
by Stuart Morgan
. But the main focus was on purely visual issues: To this day there is no equivalent in art publishing.
epitomized by the work of Julian Schnabel
, Anselm Kiefer
, Jörg Immendorff
, Francesco Clemente
, and Steven Campbell
had gained international attention. This kind of art was considered by powerful people in the art world
to be loaded with important content that somehow transcended the visual dimension. Faure Walker rejected this view, and his scathing analysis of this mindset in art in an article on the 1981 exhibition A New Spirit in Painting co-curated by Nicholas Serota
and Norman Rosenthal
, made Artscribe appear out of step with contemporary trends. In 1983 Faure Walker left the magazine to pursue his painting career and Matthew Collings
, who had worked on various aspects of its production since 1979, took over as editor.
Collings made the magazine's content more international, leading to the name change—which was introduced in 1985 when ownership of Artscribe passed on to a retired American couple, Pat and Jack Butler, who had homes in London
, New York and Florida
. Their financing enabled Artscribe to become a colour glossy. Collings continued his policy of internationalism, bringing in articles and reviews from the US and continental Europe
to mix with coverage of British art. He also set up a group of contributing editor
s based abroad, and persuaded high-profile artists to make unique cover-images and 'artist's pages' for the magazine. These included glamorous figures of the moment such as George Condo
, Julian Schnabel
, Markus Lupertz
, Albert Oehlen
, Werner Buttner, Jean-Michel Basquiat
, Eric Fischl
and Nancy Spero
, but also worthy Brits, such as Art & Language
, Hannah Collins
, Ian McKeever
and Gerard Hemsworth
. In 1987 Collings received a commendation for his transformation of Artscribe from the Turner Prize
jury (other art-world figures singled out for commendation that year were Nicholas Serota
, soon to be director of the Tate
). Collings was fired as editor by the owners later that year after an argument with one of the office staff. (He went on to write and present popular TV programmes on art and now combines TV work with painting.)
was a highly respected art writer
who freelanced for various publications, including Artscribe, Art Monthly
and Artforum
. He also played an influential role in the UK as a curator
. (He was, for example, the first champion in the UK of American sculptor Louise Bourgeois
, organizing a retrospective
of her work as early as 1985 at London
's Serpentine Gallery
.) If the Faure Walker phase of Artscribe was intelligently visual and mostly local, the Collings phase inspired but scrappy and fervently international, the Morgan phase was comparatively conventional. This was not because of any lack of originality on the new editor's part but simply because the contemporary art scene generally was by now becoming much more homogenized. If any art magazine wished for an appeal wider than an academic pamphlet it was impossible to survive if you didn't aspire to a certain expected overall smoothness. Morgan's personal voice was distinctive but all art magazines that concentrated on the cutting edge now had similar values, looked similar, had the same ads and shared the same writers. Morgan soon gave up the editorship in favor of curating and writing and after some years withdrew from the art world because of illness. Morgan died in 2002 from the rare neurological disease Lewy Body Syndrome
. A collection of his writings, What the Butler Saw (published by Frieze
magazine) appeared to acclaim in 1996.
By 1991 the downturn in the international art market had an impact on Artscribes advertising revenue, and it was sold to Hale a company that published glossy home interiors magazines while another editor Marjorie Allthorpe Guyton was installed. The format was changed again and the cover price was doubled with the consequence that subscriptions were undervalued. The final issues included notable articles on Jannis Kounellis
and Damien Hirst
by artists Jon Thompson
and Liam Gillick
but the decline was terminal and the magazine ceased publication in January 1992.
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
magazine. It was notable for its commitment in the late 1970s and early 1980s to abstract art
Abstract art
Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...
, and for giving popular art critic Matthew Collings
Matthew Collings
-Life and career:In one of his books on art, Collings states that, in his early teenage years, he ran away to Canada. This act was preceded by a period of hanging around in a house in Oakley Street, Chelsea, whose residents included members of various rock bands including Mighty Baby and Family...
his first break into contemporary art
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
.
Founding and early years
Artscribes founding editor was the scuptor Ben Jones with the critic and painter James Faure Walker.Ben Jones retired from publishing to concentrate on making art and moved on after a few years.) Faure Walker had been a regular contributor to Studio International which had begun to concentrate on conceptual artConceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
. Faure Walker and Jones conceived the new magazine as a showcase of new British and American abstract modernist painting and sculpture as typified by the work of Patrick Heron
Patrick Heron
Patrick Heron , was an English painter, writer and designer, based in St. Ives, Cornwall.- Early life :...
. Contributors included Adrian Searle
Adrian Searle
Adrian Searle is the chief art critic of The Guardian newspaper in Britain, and has been writing for the paper since 1996. Previously he was a painter. He curates art shows and also writes fiction.-Career:...
, Terence Mulloon, and Stuart Morgan
Stuart Morgan
Stuart Edward Morgan is a Welsh former professional footballer and football manager. A central defender, he made 222 appearances in the Football League playing for Torquay United, Reading, Colchester United and A.F.C. Bournemouth...
. In this first phase under Faure Walker, Artscribe was distinguished by the lively intelligence of its writing, with a certain range—early content included a long interview with artist R.B. Kitaj (an outspoken champion of figuration) and a sophisticated description of the performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
scene in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
by Stuart Morgan
Stuart Morgan
Stuart Edward Morgan is a Welsh former professional footballer and football manager. A central defender, he made 222 appearances in the Football League playing for Torquay United, Reading, Colchester United and A.F.C. Bournemouth...
. But the main focus was on purely visual issues: To this day there is no equivalent in art publishing.
Changes in the 1980s
In the early 1980s neo-expressionismNeo-expressionism
Neo-expressionism is a style of modern painting and sculpture that emerged in the late 1970s and dominated the art market until the mid-1980s...
epitomized by the work of Julian Schnabel
Julian Schnabel
Julian Schnabel is an American artist and filmmaker. In the 1980s, Schnabel received international media attention for his "plate paintings"—large-scale paintings set on broken ceramic plates....
, Anselm Kiefer
Anselm Kiefer
Anselm Kiefer is a German painter and sculptor. He studied with Joseph Beuys and Peter Dreher during the 1970s. His works incorporate materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac...
, Jörg Immendorff
Jörg Immendorff
Jörg Immendorff was one of the best known contemporary German painters; he was also a sculptor, stage designer and art professor.- Life and work :...
, Francesco Clemente
Francesco Clemente
Francesco Clemente is an Italian and American contemporary artist. Influenced by thinkers as diverse as Gregory Bateson, William Blake, Allen Ginsberg, and J Krishnamurti, the art of Francesco Clemente is inclusive and nomadic, crossing many borders, intellectual and geographical.Dividing his time...
, and Steven Campbell
Steven Campbell
Steven Campbell is a Scottish and Australian professional central defender, who currently plays for East Fife....
had gained international attention. This kind of art was considered by powerful people in the art world
Art world
The art world is composed of all the people involved in the production, commission, preservation, promotion, criticism, and sale of art. Howard S. Becker describes it as "the network of people whose cooperative activity, organized via their joint knowledge of conventional means of doing things,...
to be loaded with important content that somehow transcended the visual dimension. Faure Walker rejected this view, and his scathing analysis of this mindset in art in an article on the 1981 exhibition A New Spirit in Painting co-curated by Nicholas Serota
Nicholas Serota
Sir Nicholas Andrew Serota is a British art curator. Serota was director of the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, before becoming director of the Tate, the United Kingdom's national gallery of modern and British art in 1988. He was awarded a knighthood in 1999. He...
and Norman Rosenthal
Norman Rosenthal
Sir Norman Rosenthal is a British curator. He was Exhibitions Secretary at the Royal Academy from 1977 until 2008. His encyclopedic programme of exhibitions which stretched from Egyptian antiquities to recent art production, included the exhibition of Charles Saatchi's collection of contemporary...
, made Artscribe appear out of step with contemporary trends. In 1983 Faure Walker left the magazine to pursue his painting career and Matthew Collings
Matthew Collings
-Life and career:In one of his books on art, Collings states that, in his early teenage years, he ran away to Canada. This act was preceded by a period of hanging around in a house in Oakley Street, Chelsea, whose residents included members of various rock bands including Mighty Baby and Family...
, who had worked on various aspects of its production since 1979, took over as editor.
Collings made the magazine's content more international, leading to the name change—which was introduced in 1985 when ownership of Artscribe passed on to a retired American couple, Pat and Jack Butler, who had homes in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, New York and Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
. Their financing enabled Artscribe to become a colour glossy. Collings continued his policy of internationalism, bringing in articles and reviews from the US and continental Europe
Continental Europe
Continental Europe, also referred to as mainland Europe or simply the Continent, is the continent of Europe, explicitly excluding European islands....
to mix with coverage of British art. He also set up a group of contributing editor
Contributing editor
A contributing editor is a magazine job title that varies in responsibilities. Most often, a contributing editor is a freelancer who has proven ability and readership draw. The contributing editor regularly contributes articles to the publication but does not actually edit articles, and the title...
s based abroad, and persuaded high-profile artists to make unique cover-images and 'artist's pages' for the magazine. These included glamorous figures of the moment such as George Condo
George Condo
George Condo is an American contemporary visual artist.-Life and career:Condo works in the medium of painting and sculpture...
, Julian Schnabel
Julian Schnabel
Julian Schnabel is an American artist and filmmaker. In the 1980s, Schnabel received international media attention for his "plate paintings"—large-scale paintings set on broken ceramic plates....
, Markus Lupertz
Markus Lüpertz
Markus Lüpertz is a contemporary German painter and sculptor.In the 1960s, Lüpertz worked primarily in Berlin, moving on to take a professorship at Karlsruhe at the Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe in the 1970s, then to Düsseldorf where he was for over twenty years director of the Kunstakademie...
, Albert Oehlen
Albert Oehlen
Albert Oehlen is a contemporary German artist. He graduated from the Hochschule für Bildende Kunst, Hamburg, in 1978. Closely associated with the Cologne art scene, he was a member of the Lord Jim Lodge, along with Martin Kippenberger among others...
, Werner Buttner, Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist. His career in art began as a graffiti artist in New York City in the late 1970s, and in the 1980s produced Neo-expressionist painting.-Early life:...
, Eric Fischl
Eric Fischl
Eric Fischl is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker.-Early life:Fischl was born in New York City and grew up on suburban Long Island; his family moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 1967...
and Nancy Spero
Nancy Spero
Nancy Spero was an American visual artist.-Life and work:Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Spero lived for much of her life in New York City. She was married to, and collaborated with artist Leon Golub....
, but also worthy Brits, such as Art & Language
Art & Language
Art & Language is a shifting collaboration among conceptual artists that has undergone many changes since its inception in the late 1960s. Their early work, as well as their journal Art-Language, first published in 1969, is regarded as an important influence on much conceptual art both in the...
, Hannah Collins
Hannah Collins
Hannah Collins is a contemporary artist and filmmaker.Hannah Collins makes work on the collective experiences of memory, history and the everyday in the modern World...
, Ian McKeever
Ian McKeever
Ian McKeever is a British artist who has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally. He began painting in 1968, following studies in English Literature in London, and in 1970 took his first studio at SPACE, St. Katherine's dock, London, an artists' initiative set up by Bridget Riley...
and Gerard Hemsworth
Gerard Hemsworth
Gerard Hemsworth is an academic and a contemporary artist. He studied at St. Martin's College from 1963-1967 and has exhibited his work internationally since the 1970s. Initially his work was associated with the conceptual art practices of the late 1960s/1970s, however since the early 1980s it has...
. In 1987 Collings received a commendation for his transformation of Artscribe from the Turner Prize
Turner Prize
The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...
jury (other art-world figures singled out for commendation that year were Nicholas Serota
Nicholas Serota
Sir Nicholas Andrew Serota is a British art curator. Serota was director of the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, before becoming director of the Tate, the United Kingdom's national gallery of modern and British art in 1988. He was awarded a knighthood in 1999. He...
, soon to be director of the Tate
Tate
-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...
). Collings was fired as editor by the owners later that year after an argument with one of the office staff. (He went on to write and present popular TV programmes on art and now combines TV work with painting.)
Decline and demise
Collings's successor Stuart MorganStuart Morgan
Stuart Edward Morgan is a Welsh former professional footballer and football manager. A central defender, he made 222 appearances in the Football League playing for Torquay United, Reading, Colchester United and A.F.C. Bournemouth...
was a highly respected art writer
Art critic
An art critic is a person who specializes in evaluating art. Their written critiques, or reviews, are published in newspapers, magazines, books and on web sites...
who freelanced for various publications, including Artscribe, Art Monthly
Art Monthly
Art Monthly is a magazine of contemporary art founded in 1976 by Jack Wendler and Peter Townsend. It is based in London and has an international scope, although its main focus is on British art...
and Artforum
Artforum
Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art.-Publication:The magazine is published ten times a year, September through May, along with an annual summer issue...
. He also played an influential role in the UK as a curator
Curator
A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...
. (He was, for example, the first champion in the UK of American sculptor Louise Bourgeois
Louise Bourgeois
Louise Joséphine Bourgeois , was a renowned French-American artist and sculptor, best known for her contributions to both modern and contemporary art, and for her spider structures, titled Maman, which resulted in her being nicknamed the Spiderwoman...
, organizing a retrospective
Retrospective
Retrospective generally means to take a look back at events that already have taken place. For example, the term is used in medicine, describing a look back at a patient's medical history or lifestyle.-Music:...
of her work as early as 1985 at London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
's Serpentine Gallery
Serpentine Gallery
The Serpentine Gallery is an art gallery in Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, central London. It focuses on modern and contemporary art. The exhibitions, architecture, education and public programmes attract approximately 750,000 visitors a year...
.) If the Faure Walker phase of Artscribe was intelligently visual and mostly local, the Collings phase inspired but scrappy and fervently international, the Morgan phase was comparatively conventional. This was not because of any lack of originality on the new editor's part but simply because the contemporary art scene generally was by now becoming much more homogenized. If any art magazine wished for an appeal wider than an academic pamphlet it was impossible to survive if you didn't aspire to a certain expected overall smoothness. Morgan's personal voice was distinctive but all art magazines that concentrated on the cutting edge now had similar values, looked similar, had the same ads and shared the same writers. Morgan soon gave up the editorship in favor of curating and writing and after some years withdrew from the art world because of illness. Morgan died in 2002 from the rare neurological disease Lewy Body Syndrome
Lewy body
Lewy bodies are abnormal aggregates of protein that develop inside nerve cells in Parkinson's disease , Lewy Body Dementia and some other disorders. They are identified under the microscope when histology is performed on the brain....
. A collection of his writings, What the Butler Saw (published by Frieze
Frieze
thumb|267px|Frieze of the [[Tower of the Winds]], AthensIn architecture the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Even when neither columns nor pilasters are expressed, on an astylar wall it lies upon...
magazine) appeared to acclaim in 1996.
By 1991 the downturn in the international art market had an impact on Artscribes advertising revenue, and it was sold to Hale a company that published glossy home interiors magazines while another editor Marjorie Allthorpe Guyton was installed. The format was changed again and the cover price was doubled with the consequence that subscriptions were undervalued. The final issues included notable articles on Jannis Kounellis
Jannis Kounellis
Jannis Kounellis was born on March 23, 1936 in Piraeus, Greece. He studied in art college in Athens until 1956 and at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome....
and Damien Hirst
Damien Hirst
Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists , who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist,...
by artists Jon Thompson
Jon Thompson
Jon Thompson is an artist, curator and academic known for his involvement in the development of the YBA artist generation.As the Head of Goldsmiths Department of Art in the 1980s, Thompson opened up specialisms and allowed students to move freely between the different modes of practice, such as...
and Liam Gillick
Liam Gillick
Liam Gillick is a British conceptual artist who lives in New York City. He is often associated with the artists included the 1996 exhibit Traffic, which first introduced the term Relational Art.-Life and career:...
but the decline was terminal and the magazine ceased publication in January 1992.