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High Art Lite: The Rise and Fall of Young British Art
This searing book has become the authoritative account of the new British art of the 1990s, its legacy in the 21st century, and what it tells us about the fate of high art in contemporary society. High Art Lite provides a sustained analysis of the phenomenal success of YBA, young British artists obsessed with commerce, mass media and the cult of personality Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Marcus Harvey, Sarah Lucas, among others. In this fully revised and expanded edition, Julian Stallabrass explores how YBA lost its critical immunity in the new millennium, and looks at the ways in which figures such as Hirst, Emin, Wearing and Landy have altered their work in recent years.
- GenresArtNonfictionCriticism
356 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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About the author
Julian Stallabrass
32 books15 followersJulian Stallabrass is an English art historian, photographer and curator. He was educated at Leighton Park School and New College, Oxford University where he studied PPE. A Marxist, he has written extensively on contemporary art (including internet art), photography and the history of twentieth century British art.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
July 21, 2023
Personally, I really like all the art Stallabrass critiques here but I deeply appreciate this book anyway. It's accessible but not dumb and often caustically funny. Most importantly it's also a detailed history of one of contemporary art's most commercially successful moments. Recommend! Read it now!
July 27, 2011
A mixed bag. I have been reading quite a lot about contemporary art recently. I have been going to a lot of exhibitions and thinking about art and I have moved from hating contemporary art and conceptual art to gradually coming to like some of it. I have become interested in the YBA's because they seem to have made the most impact on art in the last 20 years, and one thing they have undeniably accomplished is helping to transform British Art from being backward, provincial and easily ignorable to making London possibly the centre of the art world, as Paris and New York have been in the past. Stallabrass wants to puncture some of the illusions of this scene and it's practitioners, and I am reasonably sympathetic to his cause. I still think a lot of the YBA's work is a crock of shit, but I am interested in really trying to understand why it is or isn't good. I have recently come around to the idea that Damien Hirst is actually a brilliant artist, but I still think Tracey Emin's work is awful. That's not to say I won't change my mind in the future, especially as I will be going the retrospective at the Hayward next month.
This books is reasonable and insightful in places, and mean spirited and catty in others. In many ways the criticisms he makes are fairly stale and conventional. He doesn't like postmodernism and writes from a conventional leftist perspective. He is also against nihilism and for social and political engagement. He basically seems to be a humanist. There's nothing wrong with that, but is a position like any other that it is possible to critique.
He highlights the decline in decent criticism, which I think is important and helps to account for some of the hostility he was on the receiving end of after publishing this book.
It isn't the savage critique that anti-YBA's want it to be. It is more nuanced than that. However one thing I would like to know is what he proposes as an alternative. He criticises the predominant art of the pre-YBA era as boring, state sanctioned, politically correct and elitist, with absolutely no engagement with normal people or mainstream culture. He criticises the attempts there have been to stimulate a post-YBA art scene. He doesn't seem to have any faith in any alternative. This is something he was criticised for in the reviews for the first edition so he has a snipe at the laziness of critics in the forward to the second edition by suggesting that he thought some of them might have had a look at his other books, in which he does suggest alternatives. However, whilst he might expect that of the critics could he not have added a chapter at the end for the general reader, because I'm not going to seek these other books out.
This books is reasonable and insightful in places, and mean spirited and catty in others. In many ways the criticisms he makes are fairly stale and conventional. He doesn't like postmodernism and writes from a conventional leftist perspective. He is also against nihilism and for social and political engagement. He basically seems to be a humanist. There's nothing wrong with that, but is a position like any other that it is possible to critique.
He highlights the decline in decent criticism, which I think is important and helps to account for some of the hostility he was on the receiving end of after publishing this book.
It isn't the savage critique that anti-YBA's want it to be. It is more nuanced than that. However one thing I would like to know is what he proposes as an alternative. He criticises the predominant art of the pre-YBA era as boring, state sanctioned, politically correct and elitist, with absolutely no engagement with normal people or mainstream culture. He criticises the attempts there have been to stimulate a post-YBA art scene. He doesn't seem to have any faith in any alternative. This is something he was criticised for in the reviews for the first edition so he has a snipe at the laziness of critics in the forward to the second edition by suggesting that he thought some of them might have had a look at his other books, in which he does suggest alternatives. However, whilst he might expect that of the critics could he not have added a chapter at the end for the general reader, because I'm not going to seek these other books out.
November 22, 2017
My dissertation for my history of art degree was based on the work of the Young British Artists. This book is a critical rebuttal of the work and influence of the yBas, hence much of my dissertation was dedicated to critiquing Stallabrass and his views. The following review is constructed from sections copied straight from my dissertation
It comes as an anomaly that there is so little critical scholarship on the yBas. In fact, when it comes to serious, academic discourse on the yBas there has been only one book written – High Art Lite (1999) by Julian Stallabrass. [...] Stallabrass’ book puts the yBas’ art within the context of a country rising from recession and the effect that had on the art market. However, most of High Art Lite is marred by the fact that Stallabrass openly detests the yBas. In fact, he refuses to even call them yBas and instead makes up his own term, ‘high art lite’, in order to describe their ‘low art’. ‘High art lite’ is ‘an art that looks like but is not quite art, that acts as a substitute for art’. He emits this stubbornness for 295 pages.
[...]
In High Art Lite, Stallabrass dismisses the application of theory to yBa art as ‘comic’ and suggests that the theories of Sigmund Freud, Jean-François Lyotard and Georges Bataille now had to be ‘cool and self-mocking’ if they were to be applied to ‘high art lite’ – as if this ‘low’ form of art was not worthy of having such names attached to it. This rejection of theory by Stallabrass could be one of the contributing factors as to why yBa art has been dismissed by some critics over the past three decades. Many of the yBas ‘play[ed] down the conceptual and theoretical sources of their work’ even though a vast majority of the artworks produced by the group was embedded with clear theoretical groundings.
[...]
In the last pages of High Art Lite, Stallabrass questions when the yBa craze will die. Writing in 1999, he could already observe ‘one or two clouds on the tendency’s horizon’. The sensation of the yBas did not last that long into the 2000s. Much like Young British Art’s musical counterpart, Britpop, the ‘movement’ eventually died out as the 90s died out. Most great art movements, no matter how famed or influential, usually only last a mere number of years. The yBas were no different. However, for their brief decade in the limelight, they not only dominated the British art scene, but they also revolutionised it.
It comes as an anomaly that there is so little critical scholarship on the yBas. In fact, when it comes to serious, academic discourse on the yBas there has been only one book written – High Art Lite (1999) by Julian Stallabrass. [...] Stallabrass’ book puts the yBas’ art within the context of a country rising from recession and the effect that had on the art market. However, most of High Art Lite is marred by the fact that Stallabrass openly detests the yBas. In fact, he refuses to even call them yBas and instead makes up his own term, ‘high art lite’, in order to describe their ‘low art’. ‘High art lite’ is ‘an art that looks like but is not quite art, that acts as a substitute for art’. He emits this stubbornness for 295 pages.
[...]
In High Art Lite, Stallabrass dismisses the application of theory to yBa art as ‘comic’ and suggests that the theories of Sigmund Freud, Jean-François Lyotard and Georges Bataille now had to be ‘cool and self-mocking’ if they were to be applied to ‘high art lite’ – as if this ‘low’ form of art was not worthy of having such names attached to it. This rejection of theory by Stallabrass could be one of the contributing factors as to why yBa art has been dismissed by some critics over the past three decades. Many of the yBas ‘play[ed] down the conceptual and theoretical sources of their work’ even though a vast majority of the artworks produced by the group was embedded with clear theoretical groundings.
[...]
In the last pages of High Art Lite, Stallabrass questions when the yBa craze will die. Writing in 1999, he could already observe ‘one or two clouds on the tendency’s horizon’. The sensation of the yBas did not last that long into the 2000s. Much like Young British Art’s musical counterpart, Britpop, the ‘movement’ eventually died out as the 90s died out. Most great art movements, no matter how famed or influential, usually only last a mere number of years. The yBas were no different. However, for their brief decade in the limelight, they not only dominated the British art scene, but they also revolutionised it.
December 4, 2014
Remember that thing that happened back in the 90's with the shark in the box and the kids with dicks for faces? Well, this.
June 22, 2025
This was good, but I don't agree with everything it says.
September 19, 2009
a nice blend of criticism and respect for these artists. he really goes into how this art made it in England analyzing the artists intentions. He looks at the shock factor involved in many of the works and the consumerism that was behind most of this work. It was great until the last few chapters where he starts to analyze art criticism itself and its place now in art. He gets a little tangential and more theoretical here. He is better off giving his honest outlook on art than on his own pr...more a nice blend of criticism and respect for these artists. he really goes into how this art made it in England analyzing the artists intentions. He looks at the shock factor involved in many of the works and the consumerism that was behind most of this work. It was great until the last few chapters where he starts to analyze art criticism itself and its place now in art. He gets a little tangential and more theoretical here. He is better off giving his honest outlook on art than on his own profession.
January 16, 2008
Thorough and readable. It had a lot of points that I thought were valid.
May 4, 2011
This book took on the tricky task of analyzing Young British Art (or High Art Lite as it is called sometimes). I was fascinating, but I'm trying to wrap my head around everything he wrote...
January 26, 2014
Julian Stallabrass has written the definitive critique of Young Brit Art as epitomised by The White Cube-ites.
July 27, 2025
Diamond-encrusted sugar skull for your mantel?
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews