Keith Tyson
Encyclopedia
Keith Tyson is a British artist. In 2002, he was the winner of the Turner Prize
. His work is concerned with an interest in generative systems, and an embrace of the complexity and interconnectedness of existence. Philosophical problems such as the nature of causality, the roles of probability and design in human experience, and the limits and possibilities of human knowledge, animate much of his work. Tyson works in a wide range of media, including painting, drawing
and installation
.
in Lancashire
, and moved to nearby Dalton-in-Furness
when he was four, adopting his stepfather's Christian name Tyson. He showed an interest in and talent for art at an early age, having been inspired by his "very creative and enthusiastic" primary school art teacher. However he left school at the age of 15 without qualifications, and took employment as a fitter and turner with VSEL (Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering Ltd., now BAE Systems
) in Barrow-in-Furness
.
In 1989, he began an art foundation course at the Carlisle College of Art, and the following year he moved south to take up a place on experimental Alternative Practice degree at The Faculty of Arts and Architecture, University of Brighton
(1990–1993).
In his personal life, Keith Tyson has admitted to having experienced a gambling addiction at various times during his adult life, which he confronted just before he won the Turner Prize in 2002.
His favourite gambling method was roulette, which he described as: The roulette table is one of the inspirations behind his acclaimed History Paintings series, and other motifs from gambling and betting recur throughout his work.
The results of the Artmachine became the basis of Tyson’s earliest exhibited artworks; indeed, his first solo exhibition in 1996 at Anthony Reynolds Gallery in London was entitled From the Artmachine.
The Artmachine Iterations, as these works became known, established Tyson’s reputation in the UK and internationally as an original artist and thinker, and by 1999 he had mounted solo exhibitions in London, New York, Paris and Zürich
, as well as contributed to group shows throughout Europe, North America and Australia.
, and contributed substantially to Tyson’s winning the Turner Prize
the following year.
The exhibition in Venice included one of Tyson’s most celebrated artworks, The Thinker (After Rodin). The large hexagonal monolithic black structure, which intentionally echoed the structure seen at the beginning of the Stanley Kubrick
’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey
, hummed with the banks of computers concealed inside.
In 2002, Tyson mounted what might be considered his breakthrough solo museum show, Supercollider at South London Gallery
and then the Kunsthalle Zürich
in Switzerland
. The name of the exhibition, derived from the popular name for the CERN
particle accelerator in Geneva
, indicated the significance of scientific ways of seeing and thinking about the world to Tyson’s art at this time.
In December 2002, Tyson was awarded the British visual arts award, the Turner Prize
. The other shortlisted artists that year were Fiona Banner
, Liam Gillick
and Catherine Yass
. The Turner Prize was notorious that year not so much for the controversial nature of the work of the shortlisted artists as in previous years, but because of the comments of then Culture Minister Kim Howells
. His comments that the Turner Prize exhibition at Tate Britain
consisted of "cold, mechanical, conceptual bullshit" were greeted with both approval and criticism in the media.
was Geno/Pheno Paintings in London’s Haunch of Venison Gallery
in 2004. The title and concept of the series of diptychs which constitute this body of work were borrowed from biological science; each pair of artworks featured a genotype
work (a generative system, formula or situation), and a phenotype
(one possible expression, manifestation or consequence of the genotype). That same year in Galerie Judin in Zürich
, Tyson mounted an exhibition of The Terrible Weight of History, which featured The History Paintings, which is one of the clearest and most minimal artistic expressions of Tyson’s interest in unpredictability and its representation, and his questioning of how works of art are originated.
In 2005, Tyson was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of Brighton
. The following year, Tyson first exhibited his most monumental and ambitious work to date, Large Field Array, in the Louisiana Museum for Modern Art in Denmark
, which then travelled to the De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art in the Netherlands
and The Pace Gallery
in New York. His most recent exhibition in London was in December 2007, when Tyson showed at Haunch of Venison Ten Years of Studio Paintings, 1997 - 2007. Tyson has referred to these drawings as: The drawings Tyson created on his studio wall collectively act like a kind of sketchbook for the paintings and the larger multimedia installations that have characterized Tyson’s later career. In 2009 Tyson's work was shown at the Hayward Gallery as part of the group exhibition "Walking in My Mind". This is to be followed by a solo exhibition at Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art, entitled "Cloud Choreography and Other Emergent Systems", opening in mid September. Set up as an exploration of Tyson’s practice, rather than as a mid-career survey, the exhibition will focus on the systems and processes that inform the creation of his work.
Only a fraction of the instructions issued from the Artmachine were realised as artworks (the Artmachine generated around 12,000 proposals which are still unmade), but many of the playful and inventive mixed media works that were created include a twenty-four foot painting made from bathroom sealant, and a painting of a hangman’s noose using toothpaste and music CDs.
History Paintings
Each of the paintings in this series consists of 49 identical strips, coloured with red, green or black aluminium powder, depending on what the roulette
wheel instructed Tyson to paint. Three large-scale works are named after cities with famous casinos, together with momentous years of social upheaval in their history (e.g. St Petersburg 1905), while 12 smaller calendar works are named after locations of casinos together with a month of the year.
Large Field Array
Described by Walter Robinson as ‘nothing less than a complete Pop cosmology,’ Large Field Array comprises 300 modular units, most formed from into implied 2-foot cubes; the cubes are arranged into a grid occupying both the floor and walls of a gallery when installed. Each highly crafted cubic sculpture represents a unique yet highly recognizable feature of the world, from popular culture to natural history. Sculptures as diverse as a representation of American billionaire Donald Trump
’s wedding cake, a chimney with a bird on top of it with a satellite dish, and a chair made of skeletons, were all constructed and arranged. The installation invited the viewer/participant to negotiate his or her own path through a seemingly random assortment of images and ideas, echoing the mental processes which create free associations between disparate phenomena which so fascinate Tyson.
The Nature Paintings (2005–2008)
A mixture of paints, pigments and chemicals are allowed to interact in specific ways upon an acid primed aluminium panel. The combined processes of gravity, chemical reaction
, temperature
, hydrophobia
and evaporation
simultaneously conspire to create surfaces reminiscent of a wide range of natural forms and landscapes. In this respect, the paintings seem to be depict nature, but they are also created by nature as well.
Large Wall Drawings (1997–2007)
Collectively these works on paper represent Keith Tyson’s sketchbook or journal. Each ‘Wall Drawing’ is made on a sheet of paper measuring 158 cm x 126 cm, the same dimensions as a small wall in Tyson’s original studio where he used to draw-up notes. Over the years these sheets have recorded his ideas, emotional tone and mood, visits people made to the studio, world events and even economic fluctuations. They are often exhibited in large non-chronological grids to form solid walls of diverse images, and text.
, which awarded the £20,000 prize to Tyson, consisted of the critic Michael Archer, then Director of the Hayward Gallery
, Susan Ferleger Brades, director of the Musée National d'Art Moderne
, at the Centre Georges Pompidou
Alfred Pacquement, and collector Greville Worthington. They awarded the prize to Tyson, as they “admired the way in which his work embraces the poetic, the logical, the humorous and the fantastical and draws connections between them,” and praised “the strong visual energy of his work across a wide range of media.”
In the press, The Times
art critic Rachel Campbell-Johnston
agreed that “In a series of one-man and group exhibitions, his paintings and puzzles, sculptures and contraptions - contemporary successors to Duchamp
’s chance-based works - have delighted and tantalised an tangled into knots the minds of viewers...Tyson’s works are like experiments, made not to prove facts but to promote creativity. This is why he was the right winner this year.”
Similarly, the critic Alex Farquharson commended the conceptual reach of Tyson’s Supercollider exhibition at the South London Gallery
in 2002 claiming of the works assembled, 'Together they present the tragi-comedy of trying to make sense of life, whatever interpretative system is used, including the fluid and pluralistic medium of contemporary art.'
“These associations proliferate in many directions at once, creating an endless chain of signification that theoretically links all the units in the grid and ultimately asserts that everything in the universe in somehow connected. While this possibility is interesting to ponder...Large Field Array can also seem more trite than profound. This may be due to the extremely high production values and hyper-realism of the sculptures, which would make more visual sense in the context of certain theme parks. Indeed, I found myself thinking that Walt Disney
had already addressed these issues in his Magic Kingdom
, to the tune of ‘It’s a small world after all.’”
Some of Tyson’s more hostile critics, by contrast, have acknowledged and respected the intellectual rigour of Tyson’s work, but have felt that he is too dispassionate and clinical an artist. Adrian Searle
has written that, “Tyson’s conceptually inventive and quirky games - like watching Douglas Adams
meet Marcel Duchamp over chess - leave me a bit cold. I find the profligacy of his art wearying.” Michael Glover
, also writing about Tyson’s Turner Prize victory, agreed that, “Tyson has a big brain and lots of loudly voiced ideas about the ‘global totality of knowledge and language’ but, taken together, the work seems emotionally thin, more the tricksy, adroit antics of some brainbox than art of any memorable substance.”
Secondary Works
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...
. His work is concerned with an interest in generative systems, and an embrace of the complexity and interconnectedness of existence. Philosophical problems such as the nature of causality, the roles of probability and design in human experience, and the limits and possibilities of human knowledge, animate much of his work. Tyson works in a wide range of media, including painting, drawing
Drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...
and installation
Installation art
Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...
.
Early life
Keith Tyson was born Keith Thomas Bower in UlverstonUlverston
Ulverston is a market town and civil parish in the South Lakeland district of Cumbria in north-west England. Historically part of Lancashire, the town is located in the Furness area, close to the Lake District, and just north of Morecambe Bay....
in Lancashire
Lancashire
Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...
, and moved to nearby Dalton-in-Furness
Dalton-in-Furness
Dalton-in-Furness is a small town of 8,394 people, north east of Barrow-in-Furness, in Cumbria, England.-History:Dalton is mentioned in the Domesday Book, written as "Daltune" as one of the townships forming the Manor of Hougun held by Earl Tostig. Historically, it was the capital of Furness...
when he was four, adopting his stepfather's Christian name Tyson. He showed an interest in and talent for art at an early age, having been inspired by his "very creative and enthusiastic" primary school art teacher. However he left school at the age of 15 without qualifications, and took employment as a fitter and turner with VSEL (Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering Ltd., now BAE Systems
BAE Systems
BAE Systems plc is a British multinational defence, security and aerospace company headquartered in London, United Kingdom, that has global interests, particularly in North America through its subsidiary BAE Systems Inc. BAE is among the world's largest military contractors; in 2009 it was the...
) in Barrow-in-Furness
Barrow-in-Furness
Barrow-in-Furness is an industrial town and seaport which forms about half the territory of the wider Borough of Barrow-in-Furness in the county of Cumbria, England. It lies north of Liverpool, northwest of Manchester and southwest from the county town of Carlisle...
.
In 1989, he began an art foundation course at the Carlisle College of Art, and the following year he moved south to take up a place on experimental Alternative Practice degree at The Faculty of Arts and Architecture, University of Brighton
University of Brighton
The University of Brighton is an English university of the United Kingdom, with a community of over 23,000 students and 2,600 staff based on campuses in Brighton, Eastbourne and Hastings. It has one of the best teaching quality ratings in the UK and a strong research record, factors which...
(1990–1993).
In his personal life, Keith Tyson has admitted to having experienced a gambling addiction at various times during his adult life, which he confronted just before he won the Turner Prize in 2002.
His favourite gambling method was roulette, which he described as: The roulette table is one of the inspirations behind his acclaimed History Paintings series, and other motifs from gambling and betting recur throughout his work.
The Artmachine Years: 1991 - 1999
During the 1990s, Tyson’s practice was dominated by the Artmachine, which was the first means through which Tyson explored his ongoing interest in randomness, causality, and the question of how things come into being. The Artmachine was a method Tyson developed which used a combination of computer programmes, flow charts and books in order to generate chance combinations of words and ideas, which were then realised in practice as artworks in a wide range of media.The results of the Artmachine became the basis of Tyson’s earliest exhibited artworks; indeed, his first solo exhibition in 1996 at Anthony Reynolds Gallery in London was entitled From the Artmachine.
The Artmachine Iterations, as these works became known, established Tyson’s reputation in the UK and internationally as an original artist and thinker, and by 1999 he had mounted solo exhibitions in London, New York, Paris and Zürich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
, as well as contributed to group shows throughout Europe, North America and Australia.
From The Artmachine to the Turner Prize: 1999 - 2002
From 1999, Tyson’s interests practice turned from the Artmachine towards an artistic approach which explored the same thematic terrain, but this time directly by his own hand. The first such body of work was entitled Drawing and Thinking. Many of these works were installed in the international exhibition in the 2001 Venice BiennaleVenice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
, and contributed substantially to Tyson’s winning 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...
the following year.
The exhibition in Venice included one of Tyson’s most celebrated artworks, The Thinker (After Rodin). The large hexagonal monolithic black structure, which intentionally echoed the structure seen at the beginning of the Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick was an American film director, writer, producer, and photographer who lived in England during most of the last four decades of his career...
’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey (film)
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, partially inspired by Clarke's short story The Sentinel...
, hummed with the banks of computers concealed inside.
In 2002, Tyson mounted what might be considered his breakthrough solo museum show, Supercollider at South London Gallery
South London Gallery
South London Gallery, founded 1891, often known by the acronym SLG, is a public-funded gallery of contemporary art in Camberwell, London - exhibiting artists included Alfredo Jaar, Ryan Gander and Chris Burden...
and then the Kunsthalle Zürich
Kunsthalle Zürich
The Kunsthalle Zürich is a contemporary art exhibition centre in Zurich, Switzerland. It is located on Limmatstrasse, near the city centre. The current director is Beatrix Ruf.A number of temporary exhibitions are organized each year...
in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
. The name of the exhibition, derived from the popular name for the CERN
CERN
The European Organization for Nuclear Research , known as CERN , is an international organization whose purpose is to operate the world's largest particle physics laboratory, which is situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border...
particle accelerator in Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
, indicated the significance of scientific ways of seeing and thinking about the world to Tyson’s art at this time.
In December 2002, Tyson was awarded the British visual arts award, 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...
. The other shortlisted artists that year were Fiona Banner
Fiona Banner
Fiona Banner is an English artist, who was short-listed for the Turner Prize in 2002. In 2010, she produced new work for a Duveen Hall commission at Tate Britain. She is one of the Young British Artists.-Life and work:...
, 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:...
and Catherine Yass
Catherine Yass
Catherine Yass is an English artist.Catherine Yass was born in 1963 in London and in her early years lived in Hampstead. She later studied at the Slade School of Art, London and then at Hochschule der Künste, Berlin...
. The Turner Prize was notorious that year not so much for the controversial nature of the work of the shortlisted artists as in previous years, but because of the comments of then Culture Minister Kim Howells
Kim Howells
Kim Scott Howells is a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament for Pontypridd from 1989 to 2010, and held a number of ministerial positions within the Government.-Biography:...
. His comments that the Turner Prize exhibition at Tate Britain
Tate Britain
Tate Britain is an art gallery situated on Millbank in London, and part of the Tate gallery network in Britain, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is the oldest gallery in the network, opening in 1897. It houses a substantial collection of the works of J. M. W. Turner.-History:It...
consisted of "cold, mechanical, conceptual bullshit" were greeted with both approval and criticism in the media.
Recent Work
Tyson’s first exhibition in the UK after winning the Turner PrizeTurner 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...
was Geno/Pheno Paintings in London’s Haunch of Venison Gallery
Haunch of Venison
Haunch of Venison is a commercial art gallery founded in 2002 in the West End of London. The gallery represents leading contemporary artists with branches in London, Berlin and New York.-History:...
in 2004. The title and concept of the series of diptychs which constitute this body of work were borrowed from biological science; each pair of artworks featured a genotype
Genotype
The genotype is the genetic makeup of a cell, an organism, or an individual usually with reference to a specific character under consideration...
work (a generative system, formula or situation), and a phenotype
Phenotype
A phenotype is an organism's observable characteristics or traits: such as its morphology, development, biochemical or physiological properties, behavior, and products of behavior...
(one possible expression, manifestation or consequence of the genotype). That same year in Galerie Judin in Zürich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
, Tyson mounted an exhibition of The Terrible Weight of History, which featured The History Paintings, which is one of the clearest and most minimal artistic expressions of Tyson’s interest in unpredictability and its representation, and his questioning of how works of art are originated.
University of Brighton
The University of Brighton is an English university of the United Kingdom, with a community of over 23,000 students and 2,600 staff based on campuses in Brighton, Eastbourne and Hastings. It has one of the best teaching quality ratings in the UK and a strong research record, factors which...
. The following year, Tyson first exhibited his most monumental and ambitious work to date, Large Field Array, in the Louisiana Museum for Modern Art in Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, which then travelled to the De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
and The Pace Gallery
Pace Gallery
The Pace Gallery is a New York City-based exhibition space. It was founded in 1960 in Boston by Arne Glimcher.-PaceWildenstein:From 1993 until April 1, 2010, the gallery became "PaceWildenstein," a joint business venture between the Pace Gallery and Wildenstein & Co....
in New York. His most recent exhibition in London was in December 2007, when Tyson showed at Haunch of Venison Ten Years of Studio Paintings, 1997 - 2007. Tyson has referred to these drawings as: The drawings Tyson created on his studio wall collectively act like a kind of sketchbook for the paintings and the larger multimedia installations that have characterized Tyson’s later career. In 2009 Tyson's work was shown at the Hayward Gallery as part of the group exhibition "Walking in My Mind". This is to be followed by a solo exhibition at Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art, entitled "Cloud Choreography and Other Emergent Systems", opening in mid September. Set up as an exploration of Tyson’s practice, rather than as a mid-career survey, the exhibition will focus on the systems and processes that inform the creation of his work.
Artworks
The Artmachine IterationsOnly a fraction of the instructions issued from the Artmachine were realised as artworks (the Artmachine generated around 12,000 proposals which are still unmade), but many of the playful and inventive mixed media works that were created include a twenty-four foot painting made from bathroom sealant, and a painting of a hangman’s noose using toothpaste and music CDs.
History Paintings
Each of the paintings in this series consists of 49 identical strips, coloured with red, green or black aluminium powder, depending on what the roulette
Roulette
Roulette is a casino game named after a French diminutive for little wheel. In the game, players may choose to place bets on either a single number or a range of numbers, the colors red or black, or whether the number is odd or even....
wheel instructed Tyson to paint. Three large-scale works are named after cities with famous casinos, together with momentous years of social upheaval in their history (e.g. St Petersburg 1905), while 12 smaller calendar works are named after locations of casinos together with a month of the year.
Large Field Array
Described by Walter Robinson as ‘nothing less than a complete Pop cosmology,’ Large Field Array comprises 300 modular units, most formed from into implied 2-foot cubes; the cubes are arranged into a grid occupying both the floor and walls of a gallery when installed. Each highly crafted cubic sculpture represents a unique yet highly recognizable feature of the world, from popular culture to natural history. Sculptures as diverse as a representation of American billionaire Donald Trump
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump, Sr. is an American business magnate, television personality and author. He is the chairman and president of The Trump Organization and the founder of Trump Entertainment Resorts. Trump's extravagant lifestyle, outspoken manner and role on the NBC reality show The Apprentice have...
’s wedding cake, a chimney with a bird on top of it with a satellite dish, and a chair made of skeletons, were all constructed and arranged. The installation invited the viewer/participant to negotiate his or her own path through a seemingly random assortment of images and ideas, echoing the mental processes which create free associations between disparate phenomena which so fascinate Tyson.
The Nature Paintings (2005–2008)
A mixture of paints, pigments and chemicals are allowed to interact in specific ways upon an acid primed aluminium panel. The combined processes of gravity, chemical reaction
Chemical reaction
A chemical reaction is a process that leads to the transformation of one set of chemical substances to another. Chemical reactions can be either spontaneous, requiring no input of energy, or non-spontaneous, typically following the input of some type of energy, such as heat, light or electricity...
, temperature
Temperature
Temperature is a physical property of matter that quantitatively expresses the common notions of hot and cold. Objects of low temperature are cold, while various degrees of higher temperatures are referred to as warm or hot...
, hydrophobia
Hydrophobia
Hydrophobia or hydrophobe may refer to:* Rabies, especially a set of symptoms of the later stages of an infection, in which the victim has difficulty swallowing, shows panic when presented with liquids to drink, and cannot quench his or her thirst....
and evaporation
Evaporation
Evaporation is a type of vaporization of a liquid that occurs only on the surface of a liquid. The other type of vaporization is boiling, which, instead, occurs on the entire mass of the liquid....
simultaneously conspire to create surfaces reminiscent of a wide range of natural forms and landscapes. In this respect, the paintings seem to be depict nature, but they are also created by nature as well.
Large Wall Drawings (1997–2007)
Collectively these works on paper represent Keith Tyson’s sketchbook or journal. Each ‘Wall Drawing’ is made on a sheet of paper measuring 158 cm x 126 cm, the same dimensions as a small wall in Tyson’s original studio where he used to draw-up notes. Over the years these sheets have recorded his ideas, emotional tone and mood, visits people made to the studio, world events and even economic fluctuations. They are often exhibited in large non-chronological grids to form solid walls of diverse images, and text.
For
The judging panel of the 2002 Turner PrizeTurner 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...
, which awarded the £20,000 prize to Tyson, consisted of the critic Michael Archer, then Director of the Hayward Gallery
Hayward Gallery
The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre, part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames, in central London, England. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings and also the Royal National Theatre and British Film Institute...
, Susan Ferleger Brades, director of the Musée National d'Art Moderne
Musée National d'Art Moderne
The Musée National d'Art Moderne is the national museum for modern art of France. It is located in Paris and is housed in the Centre Pompidou in the 4th arrondissement of the city. Created in 1947, it was then housed in the Palais de Tokyo and moved to its current location in 1977...
, at the Centre Georges Pompidou
Centre Georges Pompidou
Centre Georges Pompidou is a complex in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil and the Marais...
Alfred Pacquement, and collector Greville Worthington. They awarded the prize to Tyson, as they “admired the way in which his work embraces the poetic, the logical, the humorous and the fantastical and draws connections between them,” and praised “the strong visual energy of his work across a wide range of media.”
In the press, The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
art critic Rachel Campbell-Johnston
Rachel Campbell-Johnston
Rachel Campbell-Johnston is The Times newspaper's chief art critic.Appointed to her post in 2002, she has also been her newspaper's poetry editor, leader writer, deputy comment editor, obituary writer and deputy books editor....
agreed that “In a series of one-man and group exhibitions, his paintings and puzzles, sculptures and contraptions - contemporary successors to Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
’s chance-based works - have delighted and tantalised an tangled into knots the minds of viewers...Tyson’s works are like experiments, made not to prove facts but to promote creativity. This is why he was the right winner this year.”
Similarly, the critic Alex Farquharson commended the conceptual reach of Tyson’s Supercollider exhibition at the South London Gallery
South London Gallery
South London Gallery, founded 1891, often known by the acronym SLG, is a public-funded gallery of contemporary art in Camberwell, London - exhibiting artists included Alfredo Jaar, Ryan Gander and Chris Burden...
in 2002 claiming of the works assembled, 'Together they present the tragi-comedy of trying to make sense of life, whatever interpretative system is used, including the fluid and pluralistic medium of contemporary art.'
Against
Some art critics have been sceptical of the claim that Tyson’s work derives from and appeals to big and difficult ideas, and have seen his work as more kitsch than complex. Writing about Large Field Array in Art in America, Matthew Guy Nichols wrote:“These associations proliferate in many directions at once, creating an endless chain of signification that theoretically links all the units in the grid and ultimately asserts that everything in the universe in somehow connected. While this possibility is interesting to ponder...Large Field Array can also seem more trite than profound. This may be due to the extremely high production values and hyper-realism of the sculptures, which would make more visual sense in the context of certain theme parks. Indeed, I found myself thinking that Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
had already addressed these issues in his Magic Kingdom
Magic Kingdom
Magic Kingdom Park is one of four theme parks at the Walt Disney World Resort located near Orlando, Florida. The first park built at the resort, Magic Kingdom opened Oct. 1, 1971. Designed and built by WED Enterprises, the park's layout and attractions are similar to Disneyland in Anaheim, California...
, to the tune of ‘It’s a small world after all.’”
Some of Tyson’s more hostile critics, by contrast, have acknowledged and respected the intellectual rigour of Tyson’s work, but have felt that he is too dispassionate and clinical an artist. 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:...
has written that, “Tyson’s conceptually inventive and quirky games - like watching Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams
Douglas Noel Adams was an English writer and dramatist. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television...
meet Marcel Duchamp over chess - leave me a bit cold. I find the profligacy of his art wearying.” Michael Glover
Michael Glover (author)
Michael Glover is an author, London-based poet, art critic, fiction writer and magazine editor who has contributed regularly to The Independent, The Times, The Financial Times, The New Statesman and The Economist....
, also writing about Tyson’s Turner Prize victory, agreed that, “Tyson has a big brain and lots of loudly voiced ideas about the ‘global totality of knowledge and language’ but, taken together, the work seems emotionally thin, more the tricksy, adroit antics of some brainbox than art of any memorable substance.”
Further reading
Solo and Group Exhibition Catalogues- Cloud Choreography and Other Emergent Systems, Parasol Unit foundation for contemporary art, London, 2009
- Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art, Barbican Art Gallery, London, 2008
- Keith Tyson, Studio Wall Drawings 1997–2007, Haunch of Venison, London, 2007
- Keith Tyson, Large Field Array, Louisiana Museum, Denmark, 2006
- How to Improve the World: 60 Years of British Art, Hayward Gallery, London, 2006
- Keith Tyson, Geno Pheno, PaceWildenstein, New York/Haunch of Venison, London, 2005
- Keith Tyson, History Paintings, 2005
- Dionysiac, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2005
- Head to Hand, Drawings by Keith Tyson, Thea Westreich & Ethan Wagner, New York, 2002
- Keith Tyson, Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland, 2002
- Supercollider, South London Gallery, London, 2002
- Turner Prize Exhibition, Tate Britain, London, 2002
- Public Affairs, Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland, 2002
- Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis, Tate Modern, London, 2000
- Over the Edges, SMAK-Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent, 2000
- Dream Machines, Hayward Gallery, London, 2000
Secondary Works
- Mark Rappolt, 'Life, the Universe and Everything', Art Review, February 2007
- Rachel Withers, ‘Keith Tyson’, Artforum, March 2005
- Marcus Verhagen, 'Keith Tyson', Art Monthly, December 2004 - January 2005
- Michael Archer, 'Primordial Soups', Parkett 71, 2004
- Ethan Wagner and Keith Tyson, 'A Conversation', Parkett 71, 2004
- Hans Rudolph Reust, 'Fabulous Art', Parkett 71, 2004
- Tony Barrell, ‘Rising to the Equation’, Sunday Times Magazine, 30 November 2003 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article1021478.ece
- Virginia Button, The Turner Prize: Twenty Years, Tate PublishingTate Publishing LtdTate Publishing is a publisher of visual arts books, associated with the Tate Gallery in London, England. It was established in 1911; nowadays it is a division of Tate Enterprises Ltd, an independent company wholly owned by the Trustees of Tate, and is based at Tate Britain, Millbank, London...
, 2003 - Matthew Collings, Art Crazy Nation: The Post Blimey Art World, 21 Publishing Ltd, 2001
- Louisa Buck, Moving Targets 2, A Users Guide to British Art Now, Tate Publishing, London, 2000