British Abstract Painting in the 1980S: A Symposium

The 1980s are considered a peculiarly intense period of change in British history and culture. With that in mind, the following passage in David Sweet’s tribute to Clyde Hopkins, published here in July, caught Instantloveland’s eye:
“Technical complexity was a way of keeping in touch with painting’s past, and this preoccupation offset the other strong current in eighties culture: politics, specifically Thatcherism, which became a focus of dissent for infuriated liberal and progressive commentators and artists – most of whom were on the left, as they witnessed the Falklands adventure in 1982 and, more significantly, the Miners’ strike of 1984-85. In October 1985, Clyde showed twelve paintings and six works on paper in an exhibition whose national tour included the Ikon and Serpentine Galleries: political and social issues featured strongly in Brandon Taylor’s catalogue notes for this show, with stress on protest and dissent”.

Instantloveland finds itself wondering how- or even, if– these “strong currents in eighties culture…” manifested themselves in the abstract painting of this decade?
Sweet again:
‘…Thus, Clyde’s work of this period focused on his subjective processes, “making actual the findings of introspection”:  what was central was not his ideological objections to Thatcherism, but his emotional response to the political circumstance of the time, which converted a style with roots in impressionist picture-building into an approach more reminiscent of European expressionism. Dissent and conflict, in pictorial terms, were the results of this conversion.’

What will the speakers at British Abstract Painting in the Eighties make of these, and other issues relating to that turbulent time? Will they address neo-expressionism’s impact on abstraction? What- if anything- will they have to say about Anselm Kiefer’s penetrating insight: ‘Life is an illusion. I am held together in the nothingness by art’?

Instantloveland was hoping to attend, but it has a prior engagement; and so, if anyone reading this happens to be going, and felt like putting their thoughts on the symposium into publishable form, well, don’t hesitate to get in touch…