20/21 British Art Fair
There is only one fair specializing exclusively in modern and contemporary British art: the 20/21 British Art Fair, held annually at the historic Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London. This year, 20/21 will run from September 11th through the 16th celebrating its 20th anniversary.
The fair was founded on the premise that modern British art (with the exception of Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud and Ben Nicholson) was an undervalued commodity and needed a flagship. At that time, the international market for modern art was booming and British art was gathering momentum in its slipstream. The age-old inferiority complex about the superiority of French art and, more recently, American art, was beginning to slip away. In the art schools too, the YBA movement headed by Damien Hirst and his contemporaries was hatching, and the phenomenal success of Tate Modern was on the horizon.
Thus, a small group of dealers and enlightened fair organizers, Heather McConnell Gay Hutson and Angela Wynn, created the fair and started it out in a hotel basement in Marble Arch. Works not “in the spirit of the 20th century” were vetted off, and a strong element of avant-garde, post-war British artists’ work was reassessed. The fair’s focus was and always has been historical and modernist, with a taste of the contemporary. By 1991 it had moved to the prestigious galleries of the Royal College. This was appropriate since the college boasts such internationally recognized alumni as Barbara Hepworth, David Hockney, Patrick Caulfield, Tony Cragg, Chris Ofili and Tracey Emin, most of whom have been represented at the fair over the years.
Having survived the depths of the recession in the early 90s, business has thrived. Between 12,000 and 15,000 visitors attend each year, spending from a few hundred pounds to £500,000 on a work of art. Dealers are selected by an advisory committee to ensure that the most significant artists and movements of the 20th century will be represented. In addition, the fair selects galleries that promote lesser-known or forgotten artists of merit, as well as emerging contemporary artists, to provide depth and variety. As a result, the fair has earned a niche reputation combining scholarly approval, glamour and a sense of discovery. Among those attending the fair’s opening have been Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota, the actress and model Jerry Hall, Her Royal Highness Princess Michael of Kent, Desmond Morris, Jilly Cooper, Michael Parkinson and Jon Snow.
This year, after three years of unprecedented growth in the market as a whole, the prospects for business at 20/21 could not be more auspicious. Last November, Sotheby’s realised £7.7 million—its highest-ever total for a sale of modern British art and, this June, Christie’s realised £14.6 million for the sale of 20th century British art, a new record for a sale in that category.
In the past 12 months, dozens of auction records have tumbled for individual artists across the chronological and stylistic spectrum. Two of the most spectacular were for Francis Bacon, whose record rose from £14 million in February to £27 million in May, and for the Canadian-born contemporary painter Peter Doig, whose White Canoe placed him as the most expensive living British or European artist at £5.7 million.
Works by virtually all high grossing artists today, as well as by hundreds of established and lesser-known names in the market will be shown at this year’s 20/21 British Art Fair. Some 55 of the country’s leading dealers will highlight the astonishing range and quality from the rich history of British art over the last 107 years, from Degas’ friend and student Walter Richard Sickert to the latest print by Lucian Freud. No other event covers so many aspects of British art—from impressionism, abstraction, surrealism and pop, to conceptual, outsider and contemporary figurative art.
