Mark Hudson (author)

Mark Hudson is a multiple-award-winning British writer, journalist and art critic,[1] whose books have been described as exploring the boundaries between fiction and travel writing. Since 2015 he has been chief art critic of the Daily Telegraph.[2]

Biography

Hudson's books are diverse in subject matter, but united by their approach which incorporates elements of history, travel writing, cultural criticism and personal participation.[3] As a journalist Hudson has written extensively about African music and culture, and two of his books are set in Africa. Our Grandmothers' Drums, based on a year spent living in a village in the Gambia, described the author's personal and emotional involvement in village life with a frankness unusual in either travel writing or anthropology.[4] ‘I have rarely read a book of greater passion or honesty,’ wrote the Sunday Times.[5] While the book's candidness attracted some criticism, particularly in the U.S., it won two literary awards, Thomas Cook Travel Book Award (1990) and Somerset Maugham Award (1990). The Music in my Head, a scabrous satire on the world music phenomenon, set in a fictional West African city, offended many in the world music milieu,[6] but delighted others.[7]

Coming Back Brockens, based on a year spent in a former mining village in the north of England – where the author's grandfather and great-grandfather were both miners – was acclaimed in The Independent as "a pained description of an England that has all but exhausted itself".[5] Hudson's most recent book, Titian, the Last Days, is a personal study of the great Venetian painter Titian, focusing on his mysterious last paintings.[8]

Hudson is a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph and has also written for The Observer, the Mail on Sunday, the Financial Times, the Sunday Times and the Guardian.[1]

Art Criticism

Hudson has been a notable and often acerbic commentator on British contemporary art,[9] particularly of the post-YBA generation – artists coming after the so-called Young British Artists – accusing the 2015 Turner Prize exhibition of “cosseted vapidity.”[10]

“This is art that exists only to fill exhibitions such as this one, that wouldn’t exist without subsidies, commissions and the whole lucrative contemporary art system. There’s no sense of energy or struggle in this work, either with the surrounding cultural environment or within the art itself.”[10]

British Art Show 8, was for him “the product of an art scene in which the curator, rather than the artist, is the dominant figure,” resulting in art with “a numbing narrowness of tone and concern…like bright student work that hasn’t had to stick its head over the art world parapet to face the variously grim, banal and insane realities the rest of us are living through.”[11]

For Hudson, the artist of today is “an oddly colourless creature who seems intent on writing him or herself out of the picture – in every sense,” a figure typified by the 2018 Turner Prize-winner Charlotte Prodger, whose films are “at once unapologetically difficult – with their long takes and rambling narration – and strangely self-effacing. Like something one might post on Facebook, they seem to espouse, perhaps not entirely deliberately, the social media ethos that everyone's experiences are equally valid.”[12]

Hudson was, however, positive about the official exhibition at the 2019 Venice Biennale, May You Live In Interesting Times, dominated by artists from Asia and Latin America. “You’re left wondering if the notion of “taste”, in the good and bad sense, now has any meaning... But there's a formidable sense of energy, the feeling that art in our globalised, digitally emancipated times has gained a momentum that will power it forward whatever the fates of individuals or nations.”[13]

Awards

Works

Books

  • Our Grandmothers’ Drums (1989)[1]
  • Coming Back Brockens (1994)[1]
  • The Music in my Head (1998)[1]
  • Titian, the Last Days (2009)[1]

Discography

  • The Music in my Head (Sterns)[17]
  • The Music in my Head Vol 2 (Sterns 2002)[18]
  • Etoile de Dakar ‘Once Upon A Time In Senegal’ (Sterns) (Notes)[19]

Reviews

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References
  1. Author biography, Bloomsbury
  2. "Mark Hudson appointed chief art critic at The Telegraph by Jessie Sampson". www.newsworks.org.uk. Retrieved 2019-07-21.
  3. Profile, Travel Intelligence
  4. Review, Gam Writers: Discovery of Gambian Literature and Publications Archived 2011-05-16 at the Wayback Machine
  5. Mark Hudson biography (as a fellow),The Royal Literary Fund Archived 2011-04-08 at the Wayback Machine
  6. Bradshaw, Michael. Book Review: The Music in My Head, The Richmond Review Archived 2010-08-23 at the Wayback Machine
  7. Murray, Charles Shaar. Wednesday's Book, The Independent, 18 February 1998.
  8. Smith, PD. Review, The Guardian, 11 September 2010.
  9. Youngs, Ian (8 December 2015). "Assemble help Turner Prize rediscover the art of controversy". BBC News. Retrieved 8 December 2015.
  10. Hudson, Mark (30 September 2015). "Turner Prize 2015, Tramway, Glasgow, review: 'cosseted vapidity'". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 30 September 2015.
  11. Hudson, Mark (1 December 2015). "How modern art finally lost its nerve". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 1 December 2015.
  12. Hudson, Mark (15 December 2018). "The best (and worst) exhibitions of 2018: When did artists become so bland and boring?". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 15 December 2018.
  13. Hudson, Mark (9 May 2019). "Venice Biennale 2019 review: get past the baffling British pavilion, and an exhilarating surprise awaits". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 9 May 2019.
  14. NCR Book Award, Facebook
  15. Previous Winners, Thomas Cook Travel Book Award Archived 2005-08-31 at the Wayback Machine
  16. The Somerset Maugham Award: Past Winners, Society of Authors Archived 2011-06-17 at the Wayback Machine.
  17. Brookman, Mark. The Music in My Head (Stern's Africa), Artist Archive, Dancing About Architecture Archived 2011-07-19 at the Wayback Machine.
  18. Eyre, Banning. The Music in My Head Vol. 2, Afropop Worldwide: Music and Stories from the African Planet.
  19. Lusk, John. Once Upon a Time in Senegal – The Birth of Mbalax 1979-81 Review,BBC Music, 13 July 2010
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