Keith Coventry
Encyclopedia
Keith Coventry is a British artist and curator
. In September 2010 his Spectrum Jesus painting won the £25,000 John Moores Painting Prize.
at Brighton Polytechnic - now the Faculty of Arts (University of Brighton) - from 1978 to 1981 followed by an MA
at Chelsea School of Art, graduating in 1982.
Before he could support himself through his art he had a number of jobs, including working as a painter and decorator for the infamous property magnate Nicholas Van Hoogstraten
and as a caretaker at a girls' public school in London.
gallery in 1992. Charles Saatchi
was an early advocate and collector, featuring Coventry in Young British Artists V (1995) at his gallery on Boundary Road, St John's Wood, London; he was also in the Sensation exhibition
, which exposed the Young British Artists
(YBAs) to a wider audience when it was staged at the Royal Academy
in 1997. In 2006, he received a mid-career retrospective at Glasgow's Tramway (arts centre)
. Since 2006, he has exhibited in London, Zurich, Berlin, and Seoul.
Coventry's work features in many public collections, including the Tate gallery
, London, The Museum of Modern Art
(MoMA), New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
(MCASD). In 2009, the Arts Council England
, with the support of The Art Fund, acquired a large number of works from his 'Crack City Series'.
He was also a co-founder and curator of City Racing
, an influential not-for-profit gallery in Kennington which gave artists like Sarah Lucas
, Gillian Wearing
and Fiona Banner
early exposure and was later celebrated in the book, City Racing, The Life and Times of an Artist-run Gallery. The owner of White Cube galleryJay Joplin, said when interviewed in 1994—
Coventry lived for many years at Albany (London), an upmarket apartment block on Piccadilly
, London, which inspired his Echoes of Albany, a series of work based on Walter Sickert
's Echoes paintings .
Writer and critic Michael Bracewell
writes:
Coventry has also said, "the social issue re-empowers modernism. If you attach [it] to a piece of art history, it becomes alive again."
Michael Lambirth of The Spectator
affirms that:
The art writer Matthew Collings
writes: "These paintings capture the moment when modernist Utopian dreams — the well-meant belief that peoples’ lives would be bettered by living in clean, modern, high rise buildings, with lifts, way up above the street with plenty of fresh air—evaporated. Because instead of being the touted New Jerusalem, homes for heroes, the estates spawned new problems, vandalism, violence, social isolation, drug dealing and addiction, prostitution and racism, recurring themes in Coventry’s work.".
, cucumber sandwiches, Trooping the Colour
, equine paintings after Alfred Munnings
and other icons of old-world Englishness. Richard Dyer writes that the whiteness of these paintings "...drains these potent signifiers of all but their symbolic content, rendering them as empty vessels... the eviscerated écorché of a once vital part of British nationhood, now rendered obsolete by the advance of socialist democracy, global capitalism and the rise of the nouveau riche technocracy."
director Iwona Blazwick
in 2008, Coventry said: "I wanted to present them [the Junk Series] as Suprematist-looking objects, using the colours red, yellow and blue. I like this idea that capitalism can consume anything, that McDonalds can consume suprematism. No matter what you do to react against it, it just welcomes it with open arms and says 'let's make some money from it.'".
’s Echoes series, which were executed in the 1930s and based on Victorian scenes taken from The Illustrated London News.
Coventry once resided at Albany (London), an apartment block in Piccadilly that has housed many distinguished artists, amongst them Lord Byron, Bruce Chatwin
and the actor Terrence Stamp While the works, rendered in muted pinks, white and reds, appear to depict a bygone world through rose-tinted spectacles, Coventry subverts the image, adding voluptuous prostitutes and ruined drug-addicts while exploring the "crossover between society and the sordid".
’s still lifes
of the 1920s and 30s of bottles, which he painted repeatedly while locked in his studio as outside Benito Mussolini
and the fascists
came to power. Says Coventry:
at the London Library
. Van Meegeren had successfully forged and sold on works in the style of Johannes Vermeer
, even duping the Nazi Hermann Göring
. Coventry then considered how easy it would be to fake a painting himself, choosing the expressionist painter Emil Nolde
because he thought his seemingly simple style would be easy to counterfeit. He then took a painting of the head of Christ
that Van Meegeren had executed as part of a study for the Dutch artist's take on The Last Supper, a work Vermeer never in fact painted. The Jesus heads (example: right) are executed in a colour spectrum and the frames are the same type used by the German expressionists.
Speaking to Simon Grant, editor of Tate Etc.
magazine, Coventry said that what he liked about Van Meegeren's fake Vermeer was its expressionist quality, however
Coventry added:
Asked why he moved away from his usual monochrome palette, he said heI liked the literal idea of Christ as " am the light" and "the display of these paintings in a row is a way of showing that element". He also expressed an interest in the risk to making religious paintings and thought that if he "did it in monochrome I could get away with painting something that's been done many times before and done so well."
Sir Norman Rosenthal
, the former Exhibitions Secretary at the Royal Academy and one of the judges of the John Moores Painting Prize, explains: "Spectrum Jesus explores both the moral and religious aspects of iconography. Full of ambiguity and contradictions, the painting of Jesus Christ follows some of the oldest traditions of icon painting, with the image being repeated throughout the series that the work is part of. The fact that the painting is difficult to see is intentional. The reflections on the glass slow the experience down and allow the work to be absorbed by the viewer.”
The Spectrum Jesus painting that won the John Moores Prize was acquired by the Art Fund.
single-handedly storms an enemy fortress, while in the accompanying painting a single football hooligan, Harry "The Mad Dog" Trick, an avid Millwall Football Club supporter, attacks an opposing army of Chelsea fans.
Another work shows the epic journey taken by Xenophon
and his 10,000 Greek warriors in their campaign against the Persians in 401BC, and compares it to the progress of English football fans marauding through Spain during the 1982 World Cup.
Coventry says that "By juxtaposing the two classes of events in the painting it becomes clear that the power of history is not determined by the quality of the event, but by the power of the narrative. When it's at its most successful history detaches itself from the event and its moral implications and becomes mythology."
On the right is "History Painting (One Horatii
Fought and Killed Three Curiatii in the 7th Century B.C. / Steve Ashgate an Arsenal fan fought and defeated three West Ham F.C.F. in Mayday 1992), 1994."
Supermodels, 1999–2000;
Key Groups, 2001
Collection Particulière;2007–2008
White Slaves, 2008
Broken Windows, 2008
Citations=
Curator
A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...
. In September 2010 his Spectrum Jesus painting won the £25,000 John Moores Painting Prize.
Early life
Coventry studied Fine ArtFine art
Fine art or the fine arts encompass art forms developed primarily for aesthetics and/or concept rather than practical application. Art is often a synonym for fine art, as employed in the term "art gallery"....
at Brighton Polytechnic - now the Faculty of Arts (University of Brighton) - from 1978 to 1981 followed by an MA
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
at Chelsea School of Art, graduating in 1982.
Before he could support himself through his art he had a number of jobs, including working as a painter and decorator for the infamous property magnate Nicholas Van Hoogstraten
Nicholas van Hoogstraten
Nicholas van Hoogstraten is a British businessman and real estate magnate. van Hoogstraten is known for his business empire as well as his controversial life story: In 1968, he was convicted, and sent to prison, for paying a gang to attack a business associate...
and as a caretaker at a girls' public school in London.
Career
His first solo exhibition was at Karsten SchubertKarsten Schubert
Karsten Schubert is an artists' representative and gallery proprietor working in England.-Karsten Schubert Limited:Karsten Schubert ran Karsten Schubert Limited, initially in collaboration, and with the backing of, Richard Salmon, from 1986 to 1991...
gallery in 1992. Charles Saatchi
Charles Saatchi
Charles Saatchi is the co-founder with his brother Maurice of the global advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, and led that business - the world's largest advertising agency in the 1980s - until they were forced out in 1995. In the same year the Saatchi brothers formed a new agency called M&C...
was an early advocate and collector, featuring Coventry in Young British Artists V (1995) at his gallery on Boundary Road, St John's Wood, London; he was also in the Sensation exhibition
Sensation exhibition
Sensation was an exhibition of the collection of contemporary art owned by Charles Saatchi, including many works by Young British Artists, which first took place 18 September – 28 December 1997 at the Royal Academy of Art in London and later toured to Berlin and New York...
, which exposed the Young British Artists
Young British Artists
Young British Artists or YBAs is the name given to a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London, in 1988...
(YBAs) to a wider audience when it was staged at the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
in 1997. In 2006, he received a mid-career retrospective at Glasgow's Tramway (arts centre)
Tramway (arts centre)
Tramway is a contemporary visual and performing arts venue located in the Scottish city of Glasgow. Based in a former tram depot in the Pollokshields area of the South Side, it consists of two performance spaces and two galleries, as well as The Hidden Garden and offering facilities for community...
. Since 2006, he has exhibited in London, Zurich, Berlin, and Seoul.
Coventry's work features in many public collections, including the Tate gallery
Tate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
, London, The Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
(MoMA), New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego , in San Diego, California, USA, is an art museum focused on the collection, preservation, exhibition, and interpretation of works of art from 1950 to the present.-History:...
(MCASD). In 2009, the Arts Council England
Arts Council England
Arts Council England was formed in 1994 when the Arts Council of Great Britain was divided into three separate bodies for England, Scotland and Wales. It is a non-departmental public body of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport...
, with the support of The Art Fund, acquired a large number of works from his 'Crack City Series'.
He was also a co-founder and curator of City Racing
City Racing
City Racing was an artist run space in Kennington, South London which was active between 1988 and 1998. It was a cooperative by five artists Matt Hale, Paul Noble, John Burgess, Keith Coventry and Peter Owen. They set up the gallery in a former betting shop near the Oval cricket ground, hence the...
, an influential not-for-profit gallery in Kennington which gave artists like Sarah Lucas
Sarah Lucas
Sarah Lucas is an English artist. She is part of the generation of Young British Artists who emerged during the 1990s...
, Gillian Wearing
Gillian Wearing
Gillian Wearing OBE RA is an English conceptual artist, one of the YBAs, and winner of the annual British fine arts award, The Turner Prize, in 1997. On 11 December 2007, Wearing was elected as lifetime member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London....
and Fiona Banner
Fiona Banner
Fiona Banner is an English artist, who was short-listed for the Turner Prize in 2002. In 2010, she produced new work for a Duveen Hall commission at Tate Britain. She is one of the Young British Artists.-Life and work:...
early exposure and was later celebrated in the book, City Racing, The Life and Times of an Artist-run Gallery. The owner of White Cube galleryJay Joplin, said when interviewed in 1994—
We are indeed fortunate that artists collaborate to put on exhibitions off their own bat - Cubitt Street and City Racing are fantastic examples of a process which works very successfully, I've seen some wonderful shows at both these locations.
Coventry lived for many years at Albany (London), an upmarket apartment block on Piccadilly
Piccadilly
Piccadilly is a major street in central London, running from Hyde Park Corner in the west to Piccadilly Circus in the east. It is completely within the city of Westminster. The street is part of the A4 road, London's second most important western artery. St...
, London, which inspired his Echoes of Albany, a series of work based on Walter Sickert
Walter Sickert
Walter Richard Sickert , born in Munich, Germany, was a painter who was a member of the Camden Town Group in London. He was an important influence on distinctively British styles of avant-garde art in the 20th century....
's Echoes paintings .
Work
Of his work, Coventry said in 2008, "I look at the history of art, and I look at a social issue and I combine them.Writer and critic Michael Bracewell
Michael Bracewell
Michael Bracewell is a British writer and novelist. He was born in London, and educated at the University of Nottingham.-Bibliography:*Fiction**Missing Margate **The Crypto-Amnesia Club...
writes:
In the art of Keith Coventry, the detritus, aggression and excess of postmodern society is expressed through the poised and elegant language of modernism...There is a poetic detachment in his work, expressed through his favouring of workmanlike, un-aesthetic colours which can often appear random, coldly institutional or light industrial. His art conflates the mournful, quotidian sensibility of consumer culture, tribal aggression, prostitution, drugs and bored despair, with both high modernist strategies and geo-political models. The result is a stilled, mausoleum-like evocation of modern amorality and cultural absurdity.
Coventry has also said, "the social issue re-empowers modernism. If you attach [it] to a piece of art history, it becomes alive again."
Michael Lambirth of The Spectator
The Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
affirms that:
Coventry paints in a number of very distinct styles, and seems to embody the stylistic plurality so typical of our age. He makes what look like minimalist abstracts inspired by the layout of housing estates; he paints white-on-white abstracts which are actually scenes of typical Englishness, such as the royal family at public functions; he makes sculptures of snapped-off saplings or destroyed park benches from inner-city no-go areas; he paints black-on-black abstracts based on flower-arranging or bright Mediterranean scenes by Dufy; and he reinterprets Sickert in a series of figurative paintings called ‘'Echoes of Albany’'. Coventry’s variousness, which disconcerts some critics, is deeply appealing.
Estate Paintings
Coventry's Estate Paintings (example: below left) look like homages to Kasimir Malevich's suprematist paintings, however the simple, geometric shapes, typically rendered in black or dark oxblood reds, are in fact replicas of the maps showing the layout of buildings found outside British public housing estates.The art writer Matthew Collings
Matthew Collings
-Life and career:In one of his books on art, Collings states that, in his early teenage years, he ran away to Canada. This act was preceded by a period of hanging around in a house in Oakley Street, Chelsea, whose residents included members of various rock bands including Mighty Baby and Family...
writes: "These paintings capture the moment when modernist Utopian dreams — the well-meant belief that peoples’ lives would be bettered by living in clean, modern, high rise buildings, with lifts, way up above the street with plenty of fresh air—evaporated. Because instead of being the touted New Jerusalem, homes for heroes, the estates spawned new problems, vandalism, violence, social isolation, drug dealing and addiction, prostitution and racism, recurring themes in Coventry’s work.".
White Abstracts
Coventry's White Abstracts (example: below right) seem at first glance nothing more than a textured surface. However, on closer inspection images emerge out of the whiteness through intricate impasto brushwork. One work from the series depicts the Queen being shown around the Tate gallery by its then director Sir Norman Reid ("Sir Norman Reid Explaining Modern Art to the Queen", 1994). Others have included Sir Winston ChurchillWinston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
, cucumber sandwiches, Trooping the Colour
Trooping the Colour
Trooping the Colour is a ceremony performed by regiments of the British and the Commonwealth armies. It has been a tradition of British infantry regiments since the 17th century, although the roots go back much earlier. On battlefields, a regiment's colours, or flags, were used as rallying points...
, equine paintings after Alfred Munnings
Alfred Munnings
Sir Alfred James Munnings KCVO, PRA was known as one of England's finest painters of horses, and as an outspoken enemy of Modernism...
and other icons of old-world Englishness. Richard Dyer writes that the whiteness of these paintings "...drains these potent signifiers of all but their symbolic content, rendering them as empty vessels... the eviscerated écorché of a once vital part of British nationhood, now rendered obsolete by the advance of socialist democracy, global capitalism and the rise of the nouveau riche technocracy."
Junk Series
In the 'Junk Series' (example: below left) Coventry takes the flattened and crumpled remnants of McDonalds' packaging, as it would be found on the pavements, and crops them in such a way as to transform them into iconic constructivist compositions, rendered in the brand's ubiquitous livery. In an interview with Whitechapel GalleryWhitechapel Gallery
The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, it was founded in 1901 as one of the first publicly-funded galleries for temporary exhibitions in London, and it has a long...
director Iwona Blazwick
Iwona Blazwick
Iwona Blazwick OBE is director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London.-Life and career:Iwona Blazwick was brought up by her architect parents in Blackheath, South East London...
in 2008, Coventry said: "I wanted to present them [the Junk Series] as Suprematist-looking objects, using the colours red, yellow and blue. I like this idea that capitalism can consume anything, that McDonalds can consume suprematism. No matter what you do to react against it, it just welcomes it with open arms and says 'let's make some money from it.'".
Echoes of Albany
Coventry's Echoes of Albany (example, right) explicitly references the British painter Walter SickertWalter Sickert
Walter Richard Sickert , born in Munich, Germany, was a painter who was a member of the Camden Town Group in London. He was an important influence on distinctively British styles of avant-garde art in the 20th century....
’s Echoes series, which were executed in the 1930s and based on Victorian scenes taken from The Illustrated London News.
Coventry once resided at Albany (London), an apartment block in Piccadilly that has housed many distinguished artists, amongst them Lord Byron, Bruce Chatwin
Bruce Chatwin
Charles Bruce Chatwin was an English novelist and travel writer. He won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel On the Black Hill...
and the actor Terrence Stamp While the works, rendered in muted pinks, white and reds, appear to depict a bygone world through rose-tinted spectacles, Coventry subverts the image, adding voluptuous prostitutes and ruined drug-addicts while exploring the "crossover between society and the sordid".
Crack City Series
The works in the Crack City Series make use of traditional media—oil on canvas, cast bronze sculpture and engraving—and reference the suprematist abstraction of Malevich, but also Giorgio MorandiGiorgio Morandi
Giorgio Morandi was an Italian painter and printmaker who specialized in still life. His paintings are noted for their tonal subtlety in depicting apparently simple subjects, which were limited mainly to vases, bottles, bowls, flowers, and landscapes.-Biography:Giorgio Morandi was born in Bologna...
’s still lifes
Still life
A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural or man-made...
of the 1920s and 30s of bottles, which he painted repeatedly while locked in his studio as outside Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
and the fascists
Italian Fascism
Italian Fascism also known as Fascism with a capital "F" refers to the original fascist ideology in Italy. This ideology is associated with the National Fascist Party which under Benito Mussolini ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, the Republican Fascist Party which ruled the Italian...
came to power. Says Coventry:
All the big events in the world are happening and [Morandi]'s not commenting on any of them in any way, he was just focussing on the abstract arrangement of bottles. I thought that was analogous to a crack addict who has no interest in events, he's only interested in where the bottle is, the crack pipe in relation to him.
Spectrum Jesus Paintings and Repressionism
The Repressionism Series came about after Coventry read a book on the infamous art forger Han Van MeegerenHan van Meegeren
Han van Meegeren , born Henricus Antonius van Meegeren, was a Dutch painter and portraitist, and is considered to be one of the most ingenious art forgers of the 20th century....
at the London Library
London Library
The London Library is the world's largest independent lending library, and the UK's leading literary institution. It is located in the City of Westminster, London, England, United Kingdom....
. Van Meegeren had successfully forged and sold on works in the style of Johannes Vermeer
Johannes Vermeer
Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer was a Dutch painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of middle class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime...
, even duping the Nazi Hermann Göring
Hermann Göring
Hermann Wilhelm Göring, was a German politician, military leader, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. He was a veteran of World War I as an ace fighter pilot, and a recipient of the coveted Pour le Mérite, also known as "The Blue Max"...
. Coventry then considered how easy it would be to fake a painting himself, choosing the expressionist painter Emil Nolde
Emil Nolde
Emil Nolde was a German painter and printmaker. He was one of the first Expressionists, a member of Die Brücke, and is considered to be one of the great oil painting and watercolour painters of the 20th century. He is known for his vigorous brushwork and expressive choice of colors...
because he thought his seemingly simple style would be easy to counterfeit. He then took a painting of the head of Christ
Christ
Christ is the English term for the Greek meaning "the anointed one". It is a translation of the Hebrew , usually transliterated into English as Messiah or Mashiach...
that Van Meegeren had executed as part of a study for the Dutch artist's take on The Last Supper, a work Vermeer never in fact painted. The Jesus heads (example: right) are executed in a colour spectrum and the frames are the same type used by the German expressionists.
Speaking to Simon Grant, editor of Tate Etc.
TATE ETC.
Tate Etc. is an arts magazine produced within Britain's Tate organisation of arts and museums. Prior to the production of Tate Etc. the Tate produced eight issues in 2002 and 2003 of its forerunner, Tate Magazine, variously called Tate International Arts and Culture and Tate Arts and Culture...
magazine, Coventry said that what he liked about Van Meegeren's fake Vermeer was its expressionist quality, however
...as I couldn't muster up that kind of spiritual look, I decided against expressionism, to go for an idea that I have called 'repressionism', meaning that, as I worked on each of the canvases, bringing the tones closer together, eventually all the expressiveness of each one would be completely wiped out, leaving little except the texture of the paint.
Coventry added:
As a child I was a Roman Catholic. Every Sunday morning at seven o'clock I had to go to church where I had a few minutes to look at the texts that I had to read for the service. The image of Jesus is like a container for all sorts of ideas. Maybe subconsciously I thought of the Turin Shroud as well, how the image is just barely visible – which itself is meant to be a fake. It's not a natural thing, but yet, I'm neutralising it as an image by making monochromes.
Asked why he moved away from his usual monochrome palette, he said heI liked the literal idea of Christ as " am the light" and "the display of these paintings in a row is a way of showing that element". He also expressed an interest in the risk to making religious paintings and thought that if he "did it in monochrome I could get away with painting something that's been done many times before and done so well."
Sir Norman Rosenthal
Norman Rosenthal
Sir Norman Rosenthal is a British curator. He was Exhibitions Secretary at the Royal Academy from 1977 until 2008. His encyclopedic programme of exhibitions which stretched from Egyptian antiquities to recent art production, included the exhibition of Charles Saatchi's collection of contemporary...
, the former Exhibitions Secretary at the Royal Academy and one of the judges of the John Moores Painting Prize, explains: "Spectrum Jesus explores both the moral and religious aspects of iconography. Full of ambiguity and contradictions, the painting of Jesus Christ follows some of the oldest traditions of icon painting, with the image being repeated throughout the series that the work is part of. The fact that the painting is difficult to see is intentional. The reflections on the glass slow the experience down and allow the work to be absorbed by the viewer.”
The Spectrum Jesus painting that won the John Moores Prize was acquired by the Art Fund.
History Paintings
The History Paintings (example, right) are presented in a similar manner to the great historical paintings found in museums, with heavy black frames and hand painted narratives on gold-leafed plaques, and engage with the idea of how bravery can exist on both high and low moral levels. In one diptych, 5th century BC Roman aristocrat CoriolanusCoriolanus
Gaius Marcius Coriolanus was a Roman general who is said to have lived in the 5th century BC. He received his toponymic cognomen "Coriolanus" because of his exceptional valor in a Roman siege of the Volscian city of Corioli. He was then promoted to a general...
single-handedly storms an enemy fortress, while in the accompanying painting a single football hooligan, Harry "The Mad Dog" Trick, an avid Millwall Football Club supporter, attacks an opposing army of Chelsea fans.
Another work shows the epic journey taken by Xenophon
Xenophon
Xenophon , son of Gryllus, of the deme Erchia of Athens, also known as Xenophon of Athens, was a Greek historian, soldier, mercenary, philosopher and a contemporary and admirer of Socrates...
and his 10,000 Greek warriors in their campaign against the Persians in 401BC, and compares it to the progress of English football fans marauding through Spain during the 1982 World Cup.
Coventry says that "By juxtaposing the two classes of events in the painting it becomes clear that the power of history is not determined by the quality of the event, but by the power of the narrative. When it's at its most successful history detaches itself from the event and its moral implications and becomes mythology."
On the right is "History Painting (One Horatii
Horatii
According to Livy, the Horatii were male triplets from Rome. During a war between Rome and Alba Longa during the reign of Tullus Hostilius , it was agreed that settlement of the war would depend on the outcome of a battle between the Horatii and the Curiatii...
Fought and Killed Three Curiatii in the 7th Century B.C. / Steve Ashgate an Arsenal fan fought and defeated three West Ham F.C.F. in Mayday 1992), 1994."
Other series
Kebabs, 1997Supermodels, 1999–2000;
Key Groups, 2001
Collection Particulière;2007–2008
White Slaves, 2008
Broken Windows, 2008
Selected bibliography
- Keith Coventry: Vanishing Certainties. Haunch of Venison, London, 2009. ISBN 978-1-905620-37-1
- Anaesthesia as Aesthetic. Haunch of Venison, London, 2008. ISBN 978-1-905620-23-4
- Keith Coventry; Paintings. Publisher: Tramway, 2007. ISBN 978-1-899551-40-8/978-1899551408
- Heroes and Racists. Published by the Fine Art Society, 2008 ISBN 978-0-905062-50-1
Further reading
- Rosenthal, Norman|Stone, Richard. Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection [Paperback]. Thames & Hudson; New edition edition (6 July 1998) ISBN 978-0-500-28042-3
- Burgess, John|Coventry, Keith|Hale, Matt|Noble, Paul|Owen, Peter. City Racing: The Life and Times of an Artist-Run Gallery [Hardcover]. Black Dog Publishing Ltd; illustrated edition edition (11 Nov 2002) ISBN 978-1-901033-47-2/978-1901033472
Interviews
External links
- Interview with Keith Coventry on winning John Moores Painting Prize 2010
- Haunch of Venison
- Keith Coventry film
Citations=