Formaldehyde and Found Objects: An Introduction to the Young British Artists

The name Young British Artists was coined in the early 1990s to describe a loose group of British artists who shared a similar attitude to art-making, used various materials, and really liked to shock. And, at the time, they all were pretty young.

Although they are not so young anymore, the name remains. Today, we would like to give you a brief introduction to the YBAs—Young British Artists.

Freeze and the Goldsmiths College of Art

The event that is said to give the beginning to the group was a 1988 Freeze exhibition. It was organized by a few students of Goldsmiths College of Art in London such as Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Angus Fairhurst, and Michael Landy. Their teacher in college, Michael-Craig Martin, described the group:

I spent a lot of years teaching and I’d never seen anything where there was such a large number of people who connected in this way.

What way precisely did he mean?

Found Object

Because Young British Artists was a group of diverse people, there was no single prevailing style that connected them all. They used a variety of media and chose a wide range of different subjects and forms of expression. However, some themes recurred more often than others and one of them was the found object.

They used daily objects like cigarettes or fresh food to make installations or sculptures. Here, Tracey Emin used her own bed as a work of art. Not only did she question the concept of art in general, but she also indicated the question of identity—although she called the work My Bed, it looked like the bed of any other person. Hence, we could ask: do objects define me, or do I define objects? Are objects really personal?

I Am to Provoke

The YBA liked to shock, and provocative works are one of their trademarks. Damien Hirst is probably the most (in)famous artist from the group. His animals preserved in formaldehyde or beautiful, but quite disgusting, works made of purposefully killed butterflies can make people cringe. Hirst said that he, “just wanted to do a zoo that worked… because I hate the zoo, and I just thought it would be great to do a zoo of dead animals, instead of having living animals pacing about in misery… I never thought of [the works] as violent. I always thought of them as sad. There is a kind of tragedy with all those pieces.”

Young Entrepreneurs

The YBAs are famous for their “can-do” approach to marketing and showing their art. They organized their first show and made themselves famous. In 1993, Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas opened “The Shop” in east London’s Bethnal Green Road. It was an artistic project as well as a business: the artists rented the space to sell their work. This kind of work characterizes another trace of the YBAs: experimentation.