Marcus Harvey
Marcus Harvey (born 1963 in Leeds) is an English artist and painter, and one of the Young British Artists (YBAs).
Exhibitions
Harvey has shown work internationally in many exhibitions including ‘The Führer's Cakes’ at Galleria Marabini in Bologna, ‘Snaps’ at White Cube in London, ‘Sex and the British’ at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Salzburg and ' London Calling: Young British Artists Criss-Crossed’ at Galleri Kaare Berntsen in Oslo.
Life and art
Marcus Harvey grew up in Moortown Leeds. He graduated from Goldsmiths College in 1986, and is also an alumnus of the Leeds College of Art. At that time he became a close friend of Damien Hirst. Other close friends of the two were Paul Fryer and Hugh and Stuart Allen. Hirst and Harvey encouraged Hugh Allen to begin to paint and study Art formally at the Leeds College of Art. Hugh Allen has worked closely with Hirst ever since, and was his first assistant. The trio were to be found in adjacent studios at the time that Hirst and Allen produced the first outings of Hirst's formaldehyde works. Hirst and Allen were to be found in diving suits and face masks wading about in neoprene tanks of formaldehyde with industrial sized hyperdermic needles whilst Harvey was next door with a brush and canvas.
Harvey did not take part in the Freeze show as he had graduated from Goldsmiths earlier, but Hirst included him when he curated Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away (1994). Harvey's painterly quasi-pornographic paintings attracted the attention of Charles Saatchi.
Marcus Harvey is best known for his tabloid-provoking painting of Myra Hindley created from the handprints of children that was shown in the highly influential ‘Sensation’ exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art in 1997. This, however, is not typical of Harvey’s work. Though still perhaps considered shocking by some, his non-serial killer-related paintings are a far cry from ‘Myra’ (1995). Harvey’s topic is now an odd meeting between low-rent pornography, graphic-style drawing and expressionistic painting. Grounds of wild gestural brushstrokes sit as a backdrop to strightahead tracings of porn images; his choice of colours offer a far too fluid, queasy relationship to the scenes which they highlight – the pinks and reds slipping past and sliding through each other have far more impact than the overlaid explicit line drawings, creating a tension between the aestheticisation and the reality of sex. The melodramatic expression of emotional intensity via painterly mark-making is at odds with distant glamour of porn-star poses; Harvey’s images represent an uncomfortable relationship between desire and fulfilment.