​​The Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize 2017 Judging Panel is a selection of highly respected and renowned individuals in the art world, who cover a wide range of viewpoints and varied tastes for all movements, mediums and types of Fine Art.
 
We are proud to have Dr David Anfam join this year’s Judging Panel and in this blog we ask him your questions so that you can get to know him and his work, as well as gain some advice and tips on the art world.

​About Dr David Anfam
 
David is Senior Consulting Curator at the Clyfford Still Museum, Denver, and Director of its Research Center. Based in London, Anfam’s many books and catalogues over the past forty years include studies of Jackson Pollock, Edward Kienholz, Howard Hodgkin, Wayne Thiebaud, Brice Marden, Jeff Elrod, Anish Kapoor and Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas – A Catalogue Raisonné (Yale University Press, 1998), which received the 2000 Mitchell Prize for the History Art.
 
He is the preeminent authority on Abstract Expressionism and his exhibition Abstract Expressionism, held at the Royal Academy of Arts last year, was described by Jackie Wullschlager, Chief Art Critic at the Financial Times, as "the most pleasurable, provocative exhibition of American art in Britain this century".

​Q1: Tell us about your pathway into the arts.
A1: My interest in art began quite early on as a child. There were two reasons: one negative, the other positive. When I was young I was often sick, especially with bronchitis that kept me in bed for a week or two at a time. Those were the days in pre-Thatcherite Britain when public libraries had serious funding – it’s hard to imagine now that was ever the case, but it was. So my parents – both of whom were not without a feeling for art – borrowed books from the local library to keep me relatively content.
 
Two types of volumes particularly fascinated. The first was Phaidon’s Colour Library series. I loved being able to look at a full-page reproduction and read about it on the facing page. The second were the Albert Skira art books, mostly monographs and movements. Whereas Phaidon’s series was large and slender in format, Skira’s was compact and comparatively thick – they perfectly complemented each other.
 
In a nutshell, then, the trauma of illness ultimately became a kind of muse. Being stuck in bed propelled me into the world of art. In retrospect, this now reminds me a bit of Nietzsche’s famous remark: ‘we have art so as not to die of the truth.’ Of course, I guess art has its own kind of truth, just as literature does. Consoling fictions, ideas of order and the like that life may deny us.
 
The second reason was more benign. At school there used to be framed posters on some of the walls with reproductions and accompanying texts. Leonardo, Rembrandt, Renoir – those kind of ‘popular’ names. When we queued to go into classes – which I often hated, not least because of my deafness – I started to study these posters. The more I saw and read, the more I wanted to explore different artistic periods, styles and so on. They promised a limitless horizon beyond everyday drudgery.
 
Actually, my deafness is not coincidental. Years later, an academic pointed out something so obvious that I had never realized it. In short, that because the world of sound was partially closed to me that of vision became the more enthralling.
 
Another big issue that I’ve only grasped with hindsight is that, simply put, art’s magnetism was, again, twofold (I know, everything seems to come in pairs like Noah’s Ark, doesn’t it?). On the one hand and looking back, color is what gripped me from the start. On the other hand, I was always drawn to images that captured the enchantment, anxiety, strangeness or even horror of life. No wonder figures such as Bruegel, Titian, Vermeer, Cézanne, Munch, Bonnard, Rothko and Clyfford Still have long been fixed stars in my firmament, so to speak. In varying degrees, each of them struck a balance or at least a dialectic between form and content, the visual and the existential (Titian’s Flaying of Marsyas has to be the last painterly word on human suffering, a sort of testament to the belief that this is the lot of humanity). No wonder Rothko also became my idol.
 
My father also used to take me to the local museum in Brighton, which then had on loan much of the remarkable Edward James collection before it got sold. He kept focusing us on two paintings: Magritte’s The Red Model II and an obscure English artist called Algernon Newton. The Magritte with its deathly feet turning into boots (or vice-versa) always struck us alike as scary, whereas Newton’s Paddington Basin (1925) had an almost abstract, miraculous precision to it in which the very grime of London’s air seemed to be captured like an amber that froze forever the geometrically stylized warehouses and water. Magritte’s uncanny disquiet met Newton’s canny quiescence. Somewhere in here are the roots of opposing tendencies that much later influenced my ways of seeing.
 
So by about the age of 14 or 15 I had decided to become an art historian rather than a chemist (in chemistry lessons the diverse colors and textures – from the crystalline to the liquid, sulphur’s pungent yellow and copper sulphate’s dreamy blue captivated me). When the time came to apply for a university position, I asked an English teacher, who liked to rightly goad his pupils into achievement, what should be my number one choice? He shot back, the Courtauld Institute of Art. In the same breath he added that I’d never make it because at one level it looked like a finishing school for rich girls who told their daddies they wanted to ‘do’ art.
 
To cut a long story short, I did get to the Courtauld with what was then its stellar faculty, where a state grant saw me through an undergraduate degree and well into a PhD too, including a year’s research in the US. John Golding was my supervisor and I remain eternally grateful to him for keeping me on track with my heroes Still and Rothko. John also taught me never to write in jargon, an injunction that subsequently the ‘new art history’ either failed to learn or deliberately defied. The result is unreadable writing.
 
In my opinion, the larger practical lesson to these memories is that a pathway to the arts won’t materialize out of thin air. Any country that slashes funding to libraries (or their current cyber equivalents), education, museums and so on is committing cultural hara-kiri.

​Q2: Tell us about your recent past projects (where can we learn more about them?).
A2: Over the past few years I’ve been very fortunate to be constantly engaged with energizing projects. In Denver, I’ve done a string of exhibitions at the Clyfford Still Museum. They’ve ranged from Still’s extraordinary dialogue with van Gogh and art history in general to his remarkable capacity to create works in pairs or series as well as repeating shapes within his images like replicas or doppelgängers. My long-term mission and that of the museum is to restore Still to his position as one of the titans of twentieth-century art. For those interested in learning more, the museum’s website is a pretty good starting-point.
 
Jackson Pollock has also preoccupied me. It was exciting on several counts to do a focus exhibition around Pollock’s Mural (1943), the largest canvas he ever created. Firstly, the Getty did a terrific job of restoring this epochal painting and I’m lucky to have had the chance to study it before, during and after the massive conservation campaign. Secondly, the opening venue was the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. There, the then-director Philip Rylands had the vision to install the works in Peggy’s palazzo itself rather than the temporary exhibition spaces - which I irreverently call 'the bottom of the garden'. This is only the second time in the Guggenheim’s history that this has happened – and to me at least the result was revelatory. Here was a potent reminder that most of the ‘big guns’ of Abstract Expressionism were, on the whole, made and shown in domestic or relatively confined spaces, not expansive ‘white cube’ galleries, which of course came later. The latter tend to dilute the works’ impact whereas in the former they come across with a hugely greater sense of concentration. Upfront rather than laid-back. Thames & Hudson published the accompanying book. If nothing else, I hope, among other things, that it clarifies Pollock’s crucial interest – and a hitherto underestimated one – in photography.
 
A third project – perhaps the most rewarding of all – was Abstract Expressionism at the Royal Academy, which I co-curated. To my eye, the RA’s magisterial galleries are the finest in London bar none. Against all expectations we got a veritable cornucopia of loans. For example, Pollock’s newly-cleaned Mural faced off against his Blue Poles. I doubt if we will see these two pictures – effectively the alpha and omega of Pollock’s core trajectory – together again in a long time.
 
When the RA show closed in Bilbao last June, I felt it ought to be my swansong on the subject. Which is not to say that I won’t continue with Ab Ex© – on the contrary, I feel so close to it that I’ve recently decided (don’t laugh) to copyright this abbreviation since for years I’ve found the full term to be such a mouthful when lecturing or writing – but rather that it’s key to always diversify in order not to stand still, become fossilized or intellectually archival. Speaking of which, the opportunity to write a longish essay on the late Belgian artist Philippe Vandenberg was for me another of last year’s highlights. Not being very familiar with Vandenberg’s art until then, I came to it cold, which is much better than being jaded. Thus I found it tonic to reconsider figuration against the artist’s involvement with memory, angst and the awful historical events of the past century. Hauser & Wirth did the show in New York and published the meaty catalogue. Which reminds me that commercial galleries now can be a lot more scholarly than academe.
 
Likewise, I jumped at the offer from Blain|Southern to write about Jonas Burgert for his exhibition at Mambo, Bologna. Jonas has given representationalism a new lease of life in canvases that are often vast in scale and equally potent for their singular mix of carnivalesque brightness and darkly nightmarish enigmas. Three visits to Jonas’s Berlin studio in the last twelve months or so are reminders, if a reminder is necessary, that there’s no substitute for encountering art in the flesh and as it is being made. I can think of academics to whom such a sentiment might sound naïve. If so, let them feed on their own theories. Truth to tell, though, I do believe in theory myself – except that it should never be worn like an exoskeleton.

​Q3: What are you working on at the moment and over the next year?
A3: Right now I have an exhibition of Larry Poons’s paintings in the twenty-first century that's just opened at the Roberto Polo Gallery in Brussels. Alongside Frank Stella (who admires him greatly) Larry is one of the two major survivors from the heroic generation of American Color Field painters of the 1960s. At eighty, Larry is painting with the vigor of a man half his age. He was also among the first to turn against Clement Greenberg’s overweening purist dogmas. In turn, hopefully this show will lead to a far larger project or two.
 
Life is too short to engage with only the biggest ‘names’ in art, especially when quieter hands can produce work of comparable or even greater substance to the hyped stars. Consequently, I have a publication upcoming with the Ronchini Gallery on the ravishingly polished Italian abstract painter Paolo Serra who’s little known outside his country. In complete contrast, if everything goes according to plan, I will also be looking towards China for another project, which I must otherwise keep under wraps for the time being.

​Q4: Where did your interest in and focus on Abstract Expressionism begin?
A4: The answer is simple. My father had a lifelong romance with American culture, as indeed did many people of his generation this side of the water post-1945 to whom the US looked like, well, the future. Someone told me that was how even E.H. Gombrich regarded it. That my father never crossed the Atlantic probably intensified his feelings. Thus I was brought up on a diet of Frank Sinatra, jazz, film noir, Hemingway, silk suits, Betty Crocker cake mix and big-finned cars (if memory serves, before I turned up my dad once owned a Chevy, which must have been a sight in Dulwich circa 1950). He never got quite as far as Ab Ex, though. I did.

Q5: What constitutes good Abstract Expressionism? (We know it’s a big, simplistic question, but any comments would be interesting for the wide audience we have).
A5: Ouch, you’re not supposed to ask such difficult questions! Seriously, at the end of the day quality comes in just one size. Whatever that is, it either hits you outright or subtly seduces. Rothko, Still and Pollock can do both. They juggle spontaneity and deliberation, rawness and refinement. With his synthesis of iron discipline, reductiveness and color that hypnotizes the gaze, Ad Reinhardt was a genius at the second approach. The show of his blue paintings at Zwirner New York last autumn threw me. So cool yet so, well, ardent. At the RA, the de Koonings, Klines and David Smiths looked as fresh and challenging as if they’d been done yesterday. The best of Ab Ex has real staying power, the lesser lights tend to feel like exponents of a period style. Then again, there’s a figure such as Richard Pousette-Dart. Like Mark Tobey and Sam Francis, Pousette-Dart is virtually unknown or at least undervalued in this country. My guess is that Francis’s big canvases at the RA went over more than a few people’s heads. At his finest, Pousette-Dart had a deeply poetic, magical vision. Maybe the ultimate test of top drawer Ab Ex is whether it can still do something for successive generations who were born after it. At the RA it was heartening to see young people – doubtless fledgling artists among them – palpably responding to what was on the walls with real enthusiasm. That’s the test of a classic: it reinvents itself over time for new eyes.

Q6: Do you think your likes and dislikes, tastes in art, have changed over time? Do you have any examples?
A6: Yes. I am starting to grow weary of abstraction. I’ll never forsake it but I do need periodic doses of figuration in order to sustain a healthy appetite, as it were. Once upon a time, I thought Morandi was a bore. Now I could happily see an entire museum of his work, as I did in Venice in 1998. Howard Hodgkin was a superb painter and a very nice chap too on whom I enjoyed writing. Nonetheless, I am sated with HH’s work, at least for the time being. When I was young I loved Delacroix: these days he frequently strikes me as dull. At the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam on Christmas Day I stumbled across a still life of peaches by the seventeen-century painter Adriaen Coorte that I scrutinized for almost a quarter of an hour. Years ago I’d probably never even have noticed it. Previously, I tended to like what I half-jokingly call ‘messy’ artists – from Bosch to, say, Nolde or Basquiat. ‘Control freak’ artists – Piero to Brice Marden and Agnes Martin – have increasingly if not altogether replaced them in my estimation. To cite a random name or two, at first I never much cared for Cindy Sherman or Roxy Paine, both of whom now strike me as marvelous. Ditto Barry X. Ball and others too numerous to mention. Never a favorite of Damien Hirst, I thought his extravaganza at the last Venice Biennale was a work of genius down to the mock-scholarly brochure.
 
Q7: Do you have any advice for emerging artists?
A7: It’s the lesson that Clyfford Still would have given them. Go your own way, resist the blandishments of Vanity Fair – the social phenomenon, that is, not the magazine – remember that you can never think nor look too much… and don’t despair if you don’t make it to the top ten. As Mahler said, ‘my time will come.’
 
Q8: Where do you think many artists falter in their practice or career?
A8: Getting older and more celebrated, they repeat themselves and/or sell out.

​Q10: Do you have any thoughts or predictions for the art world? (A very open, difficult question!).
A10: The current overheating cannot last forever. What goes up must come down. Or must it? As wily old Karl Marx was the first to avow, capitalism – for better or worse – never ceases to amaze. Nor does art.

©.Art Ex Ltd 2018

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Interview by Conrad Carvalho and Caitlin Smyth

Our 2nd talk in the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize 2018 series sees some of our previous shortlist and winners join us to talk about where they are now and how they’ve maximised opportunities to get there. Below we’ve written up this advice and discussion covering:

• The Artist’s journey’s to where they are
• How they have selected and maximised opportunities they have applied to
• What opportunities they’ve attracted less conventionally and how
• What advice they have for their peers on tackling opportunities.

 
FIRST TO BRIEFLY INTRODUCE OUR SPEAKERS: ​

​Maureen Jordan – Sculpture Prize Winner 2016.
 
Maureen was our first Sculpture Prize Winner. She recently held her first solo show, alongside Folkestone Triennial, displaying new work and is looking towards residencies next year both in the UK and abroad.

See more of her work at https://www.mvjordan.com/ 

​Brad Kenney – Shortlisted Artist 2016.
 
Brad’s practice is centred on painting, since graduating from his Masters in Fine Art from Chichester University he has sold work and exhibited internationally. His exhibition calendar is already filling up for 2018 and 2019.

See more of his work at https://www.bradkennystudio.com/
 

​Bob Aldous – Shortlisted Artist 2015.
 
Bob is an Abstract painter and poet. Since his shortlisting in 2015 he has become represented by Gray Modern & Contemporary Art and Cricket Fine Art. He has exhibited several times at The Other Art Fair and the London Art Fair and has also shown work at LAPADA. His most recent success was a solo show at One Paved Court Wimbledon.

See more of his work at http://bobaldous.com/

QUESTIONS TO THE ARTISTS:
 
What point would you say you’re at now in your careers and how did you get there?
 
BOB: Now represented after talking to a dealer at London Art Fair in 2015 who came down to The Other Art Fair and loved my work. London Art Fair then featured my work on their social media – instagram – and that led to a Chelsea based dealer getting in touch. Right now, although I’m technically represented I still very much feel like I am self-representing a lot but this combination works. Talking to people has been paramount to where I am now.
 
BRAD: I graduated from my MA in 2015 and made the decision to work part time and spend the rest of my time in the studio, I did lots of applications for opportunities all over the country and a year later I decided to give it a go working as a full time artist. Now, I am slowly making more steady sales and commissions, I run a monthly workshop which has been good at spurring on my own creativity to make work.
 
MAUREEN: Despite being a ‘mature’ artist I am still very much an emerging one. I feel like I am now getting into my stride not just after winning the 2016 Sculpture Prize with the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize but also holding a solo show under my own volition during Folkestone Triennial – it’s really never too early in a career to try this I don’t think. What has been important is more consistently making new work, it has increased my confidence in what I am doing and helped me refine my practice more.
 
What do you consider your top successes to date?
 
MAUREEN:  My solo show in Folkestone, because it was a challenge to put myself and my new work out there for feedback whatever it may be in such a vulnerable way. I’ve also secured a residency in Vermont, initially I thought there must not have been too many applications but when I asked it turned out there were 1200 and 50 were shortlisted so to be selected knowing that was a big confidence boost.
 
BOB: Definitely when my work went to LAPADA with a dealer that was a break through moment. It came at a point when I really needed it, not just because the value of my work went up – this is definitely not the only measure of success – but because of the validation it offered.
 
BRAD: Getting my work into London was an important success. And also my second solo show which I held in an art store. Not because I had to produce the work but in this instance I had to curate, install, market and invite everyone down and this was a new and valuable skillset to learn.
 
How do you choose the right opportunities to apply to?
 
BRAD: I find opportunities via newsletters, looking online and word of mouth. I then do lots of research. I look at the kind of image the opportunity presents, what artists have the shown previously, what tone do they present, what location are they in and do these things add up to suit me and my goals.
 
MAUREEN: I used to apply for everything but soon learnt this wasn’t necessarily the most helpful way to do things! I now look a lot for paid opportunities so I am not paying out – often opportunities which don’t have a monetary benefit don’t take into account costs like materials, time, travel, etc., that the artist may have to pay out to take part. If the opportunity isn’t paid then are the benefits worth it to develop my practice. For example, a residency I have coming up in a woods isn’t paid but it is worthwhile – its near where I live, offers me the chance to extend work I’ve done previously, is alongside other artists so will give me peer interaction and involves a symposium and catalogue so, exposure. Always bring it back to what the benefits are to you as an artist.
 
Have you ever turned down an opportunity?
 
BOB: Yes a number of them! Usually because the cost is too high. It’s always worth remembering that being an emerging artist means you are a market and there are opportunities out there that are driven by wanting your money and not benefitting your career. Remember to research so you can decipher which ones are worth possibly paying for and which aren’t and don’t be afraid to contact opportunities directly or other artists who have done them before and can possibly shed light on whether they are beneficial.
 
 
AUDIENCE Q & A:
 
What were you ‘break through’ moments?
 
MAUREEN: Winning the Sculpture Prize with the Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize in 2016 was definitely one. It gave me confidence and validation that I was on the right path which was very motivating to keep going.
 
Do you feel there are more opportunities in London and that is where to look?
 
BRAD: There is more of course, it’s the capital and a hub for the arts so naturally there will be more opportunities. But that doesn’t mean you stop looking elsewhere, I still apply to opportunities all over the country as it will open up new audiences to my work and can be just as beneficial. You just have to make sure again that you research the opportunity and make sure it is right for you.
 
What tips do you have on approaching galleries?
 
BOB: We all know it’s a big no-no to approach galleries at art fairs but I ended up getting talking to a dealer at London Art Fair, it turned out we had someone in common and the connection grew from there. I invited them to a few things including The Other Art Fair which they came to and it grew quite organically from there. The opportunity came more from talking to people and being present in the wider art world.
 
BRAD: One thing a gallerist told me was that a number of artists approached him but didn’t know anything about the gallery. If you’re emailing a gallery demonstrate you know a bit about them so it doesn’t look like a generic mail out or is a waste of their time. If your work doesn’t fit, don’t approach. One other thing I think is a good idea is to look at what is around a gallery – pubs, restaurants, cafes etc. Maybe see if they’ll put your work up and see if you can attract the gallery staff to come and have a look. Rather than approaching a gallery you need to place yourself in their way.
 
Do you have any tips on gaining exposure via social media?
 
CONRAD: Yes! We have a blog on our website where we talk about this and offer our top tips, see it here: http://www.artprize.co.uk/blog-articles/how-to-promote-yourself-1

Where do Art Consultants find Artists?
 
CONRAD: As a Consultant I used to go via word of mouth and visiting art fairs and group exhibitions. Now I more often use the database of artists we have through the prize. We keep all the entry forms and artists details and if a client is looking for something specific we can look through our Instagram feed – we post every entrant on there – to find a work or artist that fits what they are looking for then link it back to the application and get in touch!
 
Do you have contracts or agreements in place so if you sell a work you can still use it in exhibitions or for opportunities? If yes how do you do this?
 
BRAD: Usually I discuss this on a case by case basis with a collector, most are happy to oblige if it means the work or me as the artist is doing well – every step stone of success adds value and provenance to the work they now own after all. However, just be aware that if you’re reusing a work that you will be responsible for any costs incurred not the collector.
 
CONCLUSION:
 
We asked our Speakers to summarise their best advice for Emerging Artists, here it is:
 
BRAD:

• Be dedicated and consistent. It’s a lifestyle not a career and you must consider this. Are you willing to put your art practice above everything else? To make deadlines and relinquish certain other things to pursue it? It will demand a lot from you – more than you think – so be prepared for that.

• Don’t listen to discouragement. It can come in many forms, from the boss who doesn’t understand why you won’t take extra shifts to the friends who don’t get why you can’t go out every Friday night or even from yourself. You will always care the most about your practice. Keep this at the forefront of what you do and why you do it.

• Be online. Use social media, get a website and use these as a place people can find your work, make it easy for them and you to get more visibility.

 
MAUREEN:

• Get good photographs of your work. Don’t rely on others to take these but make sure you are documenting and archiving what you are doing for future reference and opportunities.

• Be flexible and opportunistic. If things fall through or take wrong turns look for other ways to work. Be open to different ways of working and different ways of developing your practice, development can come in unusual ways for example I worked on minimum wage and a zero hours contract through Folkestone Triennial which is something I never thought I’d do but it taught me so much about public art and installation, I met a lot of interesting people and made contacts.

 
BOB:

• Learn Photoshop/Illustrator/In Design. Having some basic skills with this can really enhance how you capture your work in a photograph and help you get it as close to the original as you can.

• Present your work well. If you want to target bigger buyers and higher price tags then you must think about presentation like the backs of paintings (I had to put boards and sub frames on mine!), decent mounting and framing. These touches can really help.

• You must enjoy it: You’re going to work unconventional hours, not be able to switch off, have odd deadlines, you’ve got to keep that enjoyment for what you do close and keep revisiting it.

 
​
Our next talk is coming up on the 17th January at Ashurst entitled How to Grow Your Art Career. You can read more or RSVP via this link: www.artprize.co.uk/events
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