Modern Life & Modern Subjects: British Art in the Early Twentieth Century

"There are interesting parallels in pre- First World War cultural moments and what was happening in the late 1950s and 1960s. Both involved seismic shifts in culture through technology, which affected how people see themselves. An influx of American advertising, accessible journalism and pop imagery created a great shift that has echoes in the way that the web has changed our lives in the last 20 years. I believe there’s a technological and cultural revolution during the 1950s and 1960s that harks back to the early 20th century, when the exponential growth of the city, the change in speed of life with more widespread use of the motorcar and the cable. The world was being experienced in different ways, physically and visually. Lisa Tickner conveys these seismic shifts brilliantly. She’s able to take a single work by an artist and from that extrapolate not only their place in the culture, but so much fascinating detail about the culture itself. What’s key here is to understand how artists and their work reflect a whole shift in subjectivity. It’s very rare to find an art historian who pays such close attention to the art object and at the same time can talk with such breadth about the wider culture. There are plenty of art historians who will tell you all there is to know about a given object, but they can’t fit it into a bigger picture. What makes this object relevant or revealing? Tickner does so brilliantly. Selecting even a half dozen works and artists she is able to convey how together they describe the whole paradigm shift in modern experience. Victorian Britain was a very different place from modern Britain. Artists can provide the signposts that help us to get from one to the other."