[Chris Burns]
ART and literature are normally thought of as distinct from each other. But – surprising as it may seem – many artists are also talented novelists.
It is a welcome phenomenon. Artists love to innovate, provoke and transgress. That is a huge contrast with the staid world of literature, which mostly favours the middlebrow and likes to keep the avant garde firmly to the rear.
Artists have been writing novels for a long time, though the extent of their contribution to literature has gone mostly unrecognised. A key pioneer was modernist painter and writer Wyndham Lewis. A sometime Camden resident, he published his blackly comic novel Tarr back in 1916.
He has been followed by many others. A research project called The Book Lovers has identified no less than 650 novels by artists.
For many artists, the novel has become another promising medium to exploit, alongside videos, installations, performances and – of course – painting and drawing.
In tandem with this, contemporary novelists are plundering the art world, both for subject matter and to borrow creative approaches from artists. I am one of them.
My novel Art is a dark satire about the birth of the Young British Artist scene in Hoxton and Shoreditch during the early 1990s. Some of those YBAs now dominate the global art world, and I was inspired by their exuberance and vitality. The novel has received rave reviews across national media; much of its success is due to my encounters within that milieu.
Yet so far the links between art and literature remain largely unexplored. To dive deeper, I have organised a mini-festival called Artists & Fiction at Candid Arts. Through readings, interviews and a panel discussion we will address two crucial questions: Why do artists so often write outstanding novels? Why does contemporary art make such compelling subject matter for literary fiction?
Three artists who are also novelists are participating. They all have strong local connections. They include former Hoxton resident and YBA Simon Bill, together with two Islington residents: Royal College of Art lecturer Sean Ashton, and cult artist and writer Stewart Home. Their writing is by turns subversive, radical, entertaining – and laugh-out-loud funny. And if that was not enough, for further creative cross-pollination Islington resident and artist Chris Burns will display artworks inspired by my novel.
• Artists & Fiction is at Candid Arts, 3 Torrens Street, EC1V 1NQ on October 30 at 7pm. Admission £5 online, £6 on the door. See: bit.ly/3XVBwfs
