Whatever became of the Old Neurotic Realists? That is one the question begged by Charles Saatchi's label for a group of artists he has identified as the Next Big Thing in British art: the New Neurotic Realists. Just to show he's serious he has been buying and exhibiting their work, and intends to mount a big group exhibition of it next January. This announcement last week coincided with the launch of M & C Saatchi Arts, a company specifically targeting arts and arts organisations. It will, say the Saatchis, mark the beginning of a new era in arts promotion.
These linked initiatives, coming just in advance of the sale of works by older Saatchi Britpack artists, including Damien Hirst, at Christie's on December 8th, might seem to add insult to injury, as if the decks are being cleared for the new crew. But that isn't really so. Saatchi has been enormously helpful to Hirst, and the chances are that the bad boy of Brit art, if not all of his contemporaries, is now grown up enough to weather any blips in the market, and the sale might mean good rather than news for him.
While Saatchi's presumption in setting the artistic agenda may seem arrogant, it wouldn't do to discount it. Over the last decade he has shown an ability to set the pace in terms of art fashion to an extent that many a curator must envy. There is a logic to his thinking on the New Neurotic Realists. It's like an accelerated replay of what happened in art at the end of the 1970s. At that stage, the art world suddenly and mysteriously tired of the dominance of wordy, austere Conceptualism and enthusiastically embraced what became known as Neo-Expressionism.
In the long run, Conceptualism did bounce back, but in a new, streetwise guise. Now, Saatchi is looking beyond the Neo-Conceptualism of the Young British Artists and putting his money on a return to traditional techniques. But it's not a straightforward return. As with Neo-Expressionism, his mooted alternative encompasses a peculiar, narrow range of work. It eschews, for example, the kind of rigorous abstract painting, exemplified by Zebedee Jones, that has been making its presence felt in the past few years.
The would-be Damien Hirst figure of Neurotic Realism is Martin Maloney, a painter who was included in the Sensation! show at the Royal Academy last year. Maloney is at the centre of a group of artists who are not so much neurotic as faux naif. Like Hirst, he has organised exhibitions. His own paintings feature clumsily childlike, literal representations of everyday things. Another of Saatchi's artists is South African Nicky Hoberman. She paints distorted, hallucinogenic images of precocious young girls at play in domestic settings, in harsh, grating colours.
What unites the artists under Saatchi's New Neurotic banner is a certain awkwardness, which might be manifested as a technical clumsiness, or naivete, or a penchant for kitsch. In a way this recalls the Neo-Expressionists exaggerated display of painterly and sculptural qualities. That is to say, it's not enough just to make a representational painting. To make it clear that you are acting explicitly in response to the prevailing dominance of object-orientated and Conceptual art you have to make work in a heightened, exaggerated way, a way that explicitly underlines the implications of your choice.
While on one level this could be said to demonstrate a sophisticated manoeuvring at the cutting edge of artistic thought, it also, in effect, represents a curious dumbing down of the possibilities of artistic expression, situating it within a very tight framework of self-referential meaning. But then, it wouldn't do to prejudge the New Neurotic Realists, no matter how awful a title they've been given. Time will tell if there's anything worthwhile behind the hype.
In her abstract paintings, showing at the Rubicon Gallery, Marie Hanlon restricts herself to a very limited vocabulary: a palette composed mostly of greys, applied in flat, if subtly textured layers, in areas defined by simple right-angled divisions. The larger works are less successful. Jour typically aligns grey with blue along a vertical axis. Apart from this vertical division there is just a little shelf of grey jutting into the blue at the bottom of the canvas. But, in relation to the rest of the picture, the proportions of this shelf seem wrong. And the brushed-out surface, by comparison with the smaller work, seems relatively insensitive.
The smaller pieces are, however, much more successful. In a number of them, like Insider, Hanlon is allowing greater surface irregularity, with promising results. She'll have to beware the Scully effect, however. This derives from the fact that Sean Scully has so forcefully defined his style that any artist inclined to use bands of colour has to beware falling under the influence of his gravitational field. Overall, the show suggests that Hanlon is working her way towards defining her own style.
Absolut Secret, at the RHA Gallagher Gallery, is an intriguing show. It was organised to raise funds for the NCAD Fine Art Research and Development Fund and Ciste Cholmcille, the artists' benevolent fund. Hundreds of artists were invited to create and contribute mini, postcard-sized artworks, which are on show at the Gallagher, for sale for a minimum donation of £25. The roll-call of artists is impressive. There is a catch: you don't find out who the artist is until you buy the work, which makes it a bit of a gamble.
Not entirely, though. In some cases the individual style is clearly identifiable - though there may be one or two pitfalls in store for the unwary in this regard. As you might expect, the works have been selling like hotcakes. It is especially gratifying that the overwhelming majority of artists have responded very enthusiastically to the brief, producing high-quality pieces. It makes a refreshing alternative to the usual recourse of fundraisers, the art auction. Marie Hanlon's exhibition runs at the Rubicon Gallery until Saturday; Absolut Secret runs until Saturday at the RHA Gallagher Gallery
Marie Hanlon's exhibition at the Rubicon Gallery restricts itself to a very limited vocabulary
