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COPYRIGHT 2006 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)
Like myself, both the Arts Council and the Arts Council Collection are celebrating their 60th birthdays this year. I was born just as the modern concept of the welfare state was being incubated, which is why I find so moving that moment in Humphrey Jennings's film Diary for Timothy (1945) when E.M.
Forster's commentary asks whether or not Timothy will be able to make all these post-war dreams come true. As part of this year's celebrations, the Hayward Gallery's current exhibition, How to Improve the World: 60 Years of British Art (until 19 November), features a selection of works from the collection, exploring what I believe to be one of the most fertile periods -- ever -- of British art, a period when Britain and its visual artists have become world leaders.
Containing works from the past 60 years, the exhibition -- and more widely the collection -- offers a fascinating history, not the history but a history, of British contemporary art and also of the debate and controversy which has surrounded it. The list of artists featured reads like a who's who of postwar art, from national icons such as Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud to the Young British...
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