DAVID CURTIS BOOK
“A History of Artists' Film and Video in Britain, 1897-2004”
In recent years the use of film and video by British artists has come to widespread public attention. Jeremy Deller, Douglas Gordon, Steve McQueen, and Gillian Wearing all won the Turner Prize (in 2004, 1996, 1999 and 1997 respectively) for work made on video. This fin-de-sicle explosion of activity represents the culmination of a long history of work by less well-known artists and experimental filmmakers.
Ever since the invention of film in the 1890s, artists have been attracted to the possibilities of working with moving images, whether in pursuit of visual poetry, the exploration of the art form's technical challenges, the hope of political impact, or the desire to re-invigorate such time-honored subjects as portraiture and landscape. Their work represents an alternative history to that of commercial cinema in Britain – a tradition that has been only intermittently written about until now.
This major new book is the first comprehensive history of artists' film and video in Britain. Structured in two parts, “Institutions” and “Artists and Movements”, it considers the work of some 300 artists. Written by the leading authority in the field, A History of Artists' Film and Video in Britain, 1897-2004 brings to light the range and diversity of British artists' work in these mediums as well as the artist-run organizations that have supported the art-form's development. In so doing it greatly enlarges the scope of any understanding of British cinema and demonstrates the crucial importance of the moving image to British art history.
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312 pages |
| “This is a brilliant book that
fulfills all its promise, and more, of being the definitive history of the British avant-garde cinema. … In its range, detail and grasp of the complex array of work and ideas over an enormously long period of time, it is quite remarkable. The amount of new material here will serve future research in the area for many decades to come.” — Professor Michael O'Pray |
“The story of Artists' film and video in Britain is finally told… Curtis has probably seen more artists' moving image work in the UK than any single curator, funder or writer. For the present volume, Curtis has drawn on countless artists' statements, assimilated as part of his job assessing applications for funding at the Arts Council. The book is vast in its scope and replete with forgotten gems. — Catherine Elwes, Vertigo |
DAVID CURTIS trained as a painter in London in the 1960s and succumbed to the cinephilia of the age. He published Experimental Cinema in 1971 while organizing screenings at the Dury Lane and Robert Street Arts Lab. He was Film Officer at the Arts Council from 1977 until 2000, leaving to found the British Artists Film & Video Study Collection at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. He curated A Century of Artists Film in Britain for Tate Britain in 2003-4. |