Encounters with Artists

From individuals who are able to look back over a lifetime’s work, such as Louise Bourgeois, Roy Lichtenstein and Jasper Johns, to young artists encountered at the beginning of their careers, including Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst, from a drive through the Yorkshire countryside with David Hockney to a tour of Soho drinking establishments with Francis Bacon, alongside remarkably insightful encounters with artists as varied as Gerhard Richter, Doris Salcedo, Sonia Boyce, Luc Tuymans and Steve McQueen, Richard Cork has found that ‘talking to artists can in my experience be surprising, revealing, salutary, testing, provocative, stimulating and at times capable of overturning all my preconceptions about the individuals I encounter.’

Cork has played a significant role in popularizing late modern and contemporary art. In the words of art critic Louisa Buck, his ‘lucid, even-handed and at times trenchantly critical judgement has been invaluable in helping to create the multiplicity of approach and vigorous debates of today’s artistic climate’.