What to read to understand the YBAs

High Art Lite: The Rise and Fall of Young British Art by Julian Stallabrass  (2020)

High Art Lite is a deliciously scathing critique of the YBAs. For the most part, Julian Stallabrass avoids the kind of moral panic that characterised the liberal response at the time – for example, in the case of Marcus Harvey’s portrait of Myra Hindley for the Royal Academy’s 1997 Sensation exhibition. As well as his acerbic commentary on the meaning of the art itself (including all the big names such as Damien Hirst, Chris Ofili and Sam Taylor-Wood), Stallabrass explores the market forces shaping the art world at the time, and raises questions about anti-intellectualism that seem particularly prescient now.

Strangeland by Tracey Emin (2005)

Of all the YBAs, it is Tracey Emin’s work that most sustains, continuing to shock and disarm with tenderness and violence. Still strikingly relevant on classed femininities, ethnic prejudice and sexual politics, she has come a long way from the outraged question: “But is it art?” Her memoir remains an important counterpoint to the mythologisation of the YBAs, taking one artist out of that context (and, importantly, out of the 1990s) to look at the experience and subjectivity that inform Emin’s art.

Sexuality in the Field of Vision by Jacqueline Rose (1986)

Emin’s art, and also Sarah Lucas’s, can be understood more completely if you know something about the context in which the female YBAs were working. Lucas has cited the psychoanalytical work of Jacqueline Rose as an influence. Rose’s work on Freud, Lacan and femininities in visual and literary fields is a technical explainer. The book introduces some of the ideas – relating to signs, symbols, visual puns and how we interpret the meanings of gender and sexuality – that Lucas went on to use in her art.

Exhibition by Alex Hyde is published by Granta on 2 July. Order a copy from The Observer Shop.

Photography by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images