Adrian Searle is the chief art critic of The Guardian newspaper in Britain, and has been writing for the paper since 1996. Previously he was a painter. He curates art shows and also writes fiction.

Career

He taught at Central St Martins College of Art (1981-94), Chelsea College of Art (1991-6) and Goldsmiths College (1994-6). He has curated shows, such as Unbound: Possibilities in Painting (1994), an international exhibition at the Hayward Gallery. In 2003 he co-curated a Pepe Espaliu retrospective at Reina Sofia, Madrid, and curated Glad That Things Don't Talk at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.

He was a painter and exhibited widely, but stopped when he took up his newspaper job. He said, "I was always torn between making art and writing. Writing won." He also writes fiction.

Before joining The Guardian, he wrote for The Independent, Time Out and contributed regularly to Artscribe magazine (1976–92). He now also writes for Frieze art magazine.

Judgements

• On Jim Shaw's ICA "Thrift Store Paintings" (2000):

1) The paintings are awful, indefensible, crapulous….these people can't draw, can't paint; these people should never be left alone with a paintbrush.

2) The Thrift Store Paintings are fascinating, alarming, troubled and funny. Scary too, just like America.

• On Chris Ofili's The Upper Room (2002):

Ofili says that he was trying to do something sincere - whatever sincerity means nowadays. It would be a great pity to split The Upper Room apart, to sell the paintings one by one. The Tate should buy it. The Upper Room is better than Ofili probably realises.

• On Charles Saatchi (2004):

Charles Saatchi had almost completed installing New Blood at his gallery at London's County Hall last week when we met by chance. "Let me write your review for you," he said, enraged. "I'm a cunt, this place is shit, and the artists I show are all fucked. Will that do for you?" I almost wish my views could be expressed with the same vigour, precision and exactitude. It would save a lot of time.

• On the Stuckists (2004)

Once in a lifetime is too often for the Stuckists. So dreadful are they that one might be forgiven for thinking there must be something to them. There isn't, except a lot of ranting.

• On Damien Hirst (2005):

The eye-candy dot paintings walked off the walls; the gore sells in buckets. But the spin paintings were always miserable and the big bronzes are boring. Nor has his art been particularly influential, or developed much. Hirst has lived his career backwards, doing his greatest work first, saving all the repetitive stuff and the juvenilia for later.

• On Tracey Emin (2005):

We learn that she's "so tired and borred of masterbating". Why not just give it a break, Tray? ... This exhibition is an exhausting bender, careening from highs to lows. The lows are bad. Somehow Emin wouldn't be any good if they weren't.

See also

• Other contemporary UK art critics

David Lee

Louisa Buck

Brian Sewell

Sarah Kent

Waldemar Januszczak

Matthew Collings

References

External links

• All Guardian features by Adrian Searle
• Various articles by Adrian Searle