This is Tomorrow: Twentieth-century Britain and its Artists

"This is a book that’s just out; I was lucky enough to review it. I like this primarily because it’s just excellent writing. And we should celebrate that, you know? You might read the most worthy art history book about the most brilliant subject, but if the writing isn’t any good, you can’t get to the end of it. There are lots of books that cover this period in history—the ‘long’ twentieth century of British art history—but, not only is Michael a lovely, poetic writer, he also gives the artists their own heads. His book before this was called Studio Voices , and it was based on an archive held at the British Library in London which includes hundreds of recordings of artists being interviewed over the last 30 years, talking about what it’s really like to be an artist. These are not the puff quotes you’ll see on the cover of a monograph, this is how hard it is to be a woman artist who has kids, or how hard it is to be an artist who has to make ends meet, and therefore has to do a job he doesn’t like… Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Michael spent hours and hours going through these interviews for Studio Voices , and I think This is Tomorrow is a kind of distillation of those patient hours of listening, because he quotes heavily from artists in This is Tomorrow , allowing them to tell the story of British art from the ground, as it were, rather than imposing a view. He allows artists to speak for themselves, and also allows them to come in at different stages in their lives. It’s not all about their big moment, but the reality of being an artist, which is hard work. He’s also really good on the politics, the time period—and on showing how art is made within its own time. It feels like a new way of writing about this period. Although I must say, this period is really well written about—Francis Spalding wrote a beautiful book this year called The Real and the Romantic English Art Between Two World Wars , and there are lots of other great books that aren’t historical books. But I felt that This is Tomorrow was really accessible, really readable, and that you could have no knowledge of art history and still enjoy it. And surely that’s a good thing. I think both. You can have artists who group together and create a movement. Look at Futurism : it was launched with a manifesto, a manifesto that other artists gravitated towards, and that was definitely seen as a movement. Whereas something like Abstract Expressionism was a term that no one really liked, and the New York School didn’t see themselves as a group at all, just artists working in the same area at the same time, pushing art and painting forwards. With something like Minimalism, which we think of as a big movement, the artists hated that term. The title, This is Tomorrow , is based on a 1956 exhibition in London, where architects and artists and other creators came together. It was quite an iconic exhibition, the start of British Pop Art before American Pop Art really got going. But at the time, of course, they didn’t know that. They were just coming together to create this amazing thing, they didn’t realise it was the start of something. The energy of Britain in the 1950s came out in that show, the cultural energy. But also, you should realise that Black and Asian artists often felt overlooked, as did most women artists. They were working just as hard as the white men getting all the press. I think that’s why the feminist movement in the 1970s, thought, well, this is not right, we’ll take it into our own hands. They put on their own exhibitions and what have you. So there’s a degree to which you can help yourself. But what I think is great now is that artists of all backgrounds, irrespective of class or race or gender, can be visible simultaneously."