by SLK

Created on: November 18, 2008   Last Updated: January 11, 2009

In order to explain the phrase "Young British Artist," it is important to understand the origins of the term and the wider cultural implications that the phrase seems to imply. A brief scan of friends and colleagues confirms my suspicions: say "YBA" to anyone and we think of Damien Hirst. Is this just? Well, my research suggests that this is largely accurate. Of course, there is more to the scene than just one man, but it was his influence and early supporters that allowed what would have been just another graduate art show to flourish into an entire corner of the contemporary art market.

To start with the etymology of the phrase, "Young British Artist" was coined by the master ad-man, Charles Saatchi, a man made famous in Britain for advertisements that are shocking, sometimes beautiful, and invariably memorable. It is hardly surprising that Saatchi's art interests attract similar epithets. Saatchi used the term "Young British Artists" in describing the artists he exhibited in his St John's Wood gallery, hosting a series of exhibitions entitled Young British Artists I Young British Artists VI, from 1992 - 1996. At this stage, the art dealers of London and denizens of the art scene were starting to pay attention to this vibrant, brash, incredibly precocious group of art-school graduates.

The group's unofficial but undisputed leader, the afore-mentioned Hirst, had started this evolving group in the late 80s, whilst still studying at Goldsmith's College in London. Britain in the late 80s was a turbulent island: IRA bombs, unemployment, poll tax riots and looming recession made for uneasy times. Hirst and his cronies managed to create art that seemed to convey a weariness of the current state of the country, of the city of London and even, of the human body and life itself. The now infamous Freeze exhibition in 1988 featured work by Angela Bulloch, Gary Hume, Sarah Lucas, Richard Patterson and Fiona Rae to name a few, as well as Hirst himself. The uniting theme through out the exhibition is an interest in bodily functions, death, use of non-art materials and their role as artists within society.

Hirst's group evolved and he continued to hold exhibitions, working with a journalist, Carl Freedman to curate a series of exhibitions at the end of the 80s and into the early 90s. Charles Saatchi stumbled into one such exhibition, Gambler, and was so impressed that he started collecting Hirst's work, becoming his unofficial patron. Saatchi's attention to Hirst and his deep

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