The curators and participating artists of the critically mauled Australia exhibition held at London's Royal Academy (RA) in 2013 might take some small amount of solace in recognising that the only RA exhibition considered worse in recent memory was that of the survey of British sculpture two years earlier. Entitled simply enough 20th Century British Sculpture and curated by the then recently appointed director of Tate Britain, Penelope Curtis, that 2011 exhibition was harangued and hated in equal measure for its omissions, lack of vitality and bored provincialism. Labelled ‘shamefully bad’, ‘misguided’ and ‘just stupid’ by Peter Buchanan, ‘joyless’ by Laura Cummings, and – in an especially vitriolic zero-stars review by Andrew Graham-Dixon – ‘lamentable’, the 2011 survey fared poorly in many national reviews. In attempting to navigate the alluring and representative impulse of surveys of national art whilst simultaneously aggregating the global influences upon and the internationalism of its mid-late century, the show failed to represent the vitality and wider contribution of British sculpture. Resisting the show-stopping, globally recognised names of Antony Gormley and Anish Kapoor in favour of little-known sculptural works by Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas, post-1960s works sat next to canonical transatlantic figures such as Carl Andre and Jeff Koons. The work – the critics bemoaned – was more regional than international, mid-Atlantic than trans-Atlantic, and bitterly and anachronistically out of touch with its progressive international cousins.

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新一代英国艺术：地方主义问题

2013 年在伦敦皇家艺术学院 (RA) 举办的饱受批评的澳大利亚展览的策展人和参与艺术家可能会稍微感到些许安慰，因为他们认识到最近记忆中唯一被认为更糟糕的 RA 展览是两年来对英国雕塑的调查早些时候。2011 年的展览题为《20 世纪英国雕塑》，由最近任命的泰特英国馆馆长佩内洛普·柯蒂斯 (Penelope Curtis) 策划，因其疏漏、缺乏活力和无聊的地方主义而受到同等程度的抨击和憎恨。被彼得·布坎南贴上“可耻的糟糕”、“被误导”和“愚蠢”的标签，被劳拉·卡明斯贴上“无趣”的标签，而且——在安德鲁·格雷厄姆-迪克森的一篇特别尖刻的零星评论中——“可悲”，2011年的调查表现不佳在许多国家评论中。该展览试图驾驭民族艺术调查的诱人和代表性冲动，同时聚合其世纪中后期的全球影响和国际主义，未能代表英国雕塑的活力和更广泛的贡献。1960 年代后的作品与经典的跨大西洋人物（如卡尔·安德烈和杰夫·昆斯）并驾齐驱，与安东尼·葛姆雷 (Antony Gormley) 和安尼施·卡普尔 (Anish Kapoor) 令人瞩目的全球知名人物抗拒，而偏爱达明·赫斯特 (Damien Hirst) 和莎拉·卢卡斯 (Sarah Lucas) 鲜为人知的雕塑作品。这部作品——评论家们哀叹——更具有区域性而不是国际性，大西洋中部而不是跨大西洋，并且与其不断进步的国际表亲严重且不合时宜地脱节。