James Hyman interviewed about his career by David Glasser, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum.
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TRANSCRIPT
DAVID GLASSER
A wonderful, good evening to you all. It's lovely to have you with us. It's a special evening tonight because we don't normally interview personalities from the art world. But tonight we have a very special guest, Dr. James Hyman, who you will see in front of what looks like a lovely painting. James, you'll be able to tell us about it afterwards.
James is a very interesting man who I've had the pleasure and privilege of knowing for well over twenty years, always admired his great taste in his galleries and his art fairs, but never quite been able to afford them. That's a recognition of the quality of the artworks.
This evening is really about understanding what makes an art dealer and an art collector tick. And nobody better to discuss that with than James, because you've had many different angles to your career: a scholar, a writer, a critic, an author, a dealer, a gallerist, an advisor, a collector, no doubt, a broadcaster, too. And then most recently, a philanthropist, a visionary philanthropist in terms of your creation of a very important institution, the Centre for British Photography.
James, let's start off, if I may, by introducing you to everybody. Tell us a little bit about your background. You are you a Londoner. Where did you school? Where did you go to university, etcetera.
JAMES HYMAN
Thank you for those kind words. I'll give you a bit of background. I grew up in North London, in Hampstead Garden Suburb. I've moved about two roads away from where my mother has lived for almost sixty years. And I've always been in North London. I went to the local state school and then I went to UCS (University College School) in Hampstead, and I then, unusually in those days, became obsessed with art and wanted to go to art school. I suppose I was steered towards something more academic, because in those days, people thought, well, art school was maybe if you weren't good at other subjects, but you were good at art, that's what you should do. Rather than it actually being an exciting career direction. In a way, I did the next closest thing, which was study history of art. I did my undergraduate in Manchester and then went to the Courtauld institute and did my masters, then my doctorate, then I taught there. By accident, really, I ended up working in a commercial gallery. And that had never been my vision. It had never been my plan.
But when I was teaching, one of my second year undergraduate students came up to me at the end of a tutorial and said he want to start a gallery. This is somebody aged twenty, and they're saying, “I want to start a gallery. Would you help me to set it up?” And I said, “well that's not what I want to be doing. I like being an art critic, curating, writing as an academic”. And he said, “well, come and see what we've got”, and I said, “well, okay, okay.” We went off to Geneva, to the Freeport there, and suddenly I was looking at these incredible paintings by Picasso and Miro and Monet and Matisse. It was Helly Nahmad, who is now well known. Helly opened a gallery in Cork Street and I helped him set that up and put on exhibitions of Picasso and Miro and Damian Hirst and some of the YBAs, and we were dealing in impressionism and modern painting.
In those days - I think today things are more fluid between the different areas of the art market. you have curators at the Tate who then get a job working for an art dealer, or there's more of a flow between criticism and writing an exhibition catalogue - but in those days, it really felt as though I'd burnt my bridges. Even though I had a PhD and I'd been at the Courtauld, I'd turned to the dark side. I'd become an art dealer. For me, it was tricky. After a couple of years of working for Helly and for his family - it was very much their family business - and whether it was my personality or, or whatever, I really wanted to do my own thing. I'd done my own thing as an academic and as an art critic. And I wanted to be pursuing my own interests. And I couldn't go back to teaching. It was in those days quite hard to, having been on the commercial side, to return to either a museum or an academic institution. So what I did is set up my own gallery doing what was closest to my heart, which was the artists that I'd studied when I'd done my doctorate.
DAVID GLASSER
I want to address part of your interest. We all, everybody here, is interested in art. Yes. But we're interested in it really from the consumer point of view in terms of looking at the art and seeing it in galleries. What we don't get the opportunity, very often, is actually to talk to somebody who's got this range of experience and can share that with us. And I'm sure that I speak for everybody, that the more we can understand of that background, that'd be terrific. Tell us a little bit, if you would, about going to the Courtauld. I mean, it's the most wonderful and prestigious institution, certainly in this country, and certainly one of the most prestigious in the world. To study there is one thing, but to actually have the opportunity to teach there, you must have been there - without wanting you to be any less modest than you are - but you must have been an exceptional student for them to actually ask you to then continue to teach. What was the crux of your studies that brought you to teaching and attracted them to invite you to do that?
JAMES HYMAN
I'm not an actor. I haven't performed on the stage as an actor or a musician or any of these fields. But I do know that as a teacher, if you've got good students and you get feedback, it is incredibly energizing and stimulating and exciting. And I absolutely love teaching. I still enjoy that at the Centre for British Photography, which we'll talk about. I spent a year trying to talk to as many groups as I could. In a way that wasn't directly my job. Or maybe not the best use of my time with all the other demands. But I absolutely loved it. And part of that was to try and welcome somebody into what's a big white cube, and not have people feel intimidated and to make them feel that they're a part of things. But partly, I just love that exchange and people coming out with ideas, and it's just very, very stimulating. I love the teaching side.
Why I was teaching there? Firstly, my masters had been about art in France, covering cubism and surrealism. I was in the modern department, actually my teaching included Impressionism and Modernism and the modern period. But I think one of the things that was important is, back in the day, the 1990s, there wasn't much teaching on anything contemporary or even vaguely contemporary. In me doing a doctorate on figurative art and its promotion during the Cold War, looking at the post war period, that was about as contemporary as we got. And what was really exciting for me and maybe contributed something there, is that the artists were accessible.
I was looking particularly at what became known as the School of London. And objectively they were hermits. They weren't accessible. They were very private and obsessed with spending their time in their studio. But I'd been very fortunate that when I was still at Manchester as an undergraduate, I'd done my final year dissertation on Leon Kossoff, and I'd got to meet him and I was very, very close. Until more recent years, he was the artist I was closest to. And I learned an enormous amount from him that was completely different from anything I could learn as an art historian and looking at books or visiting museums.
One of the painters that I was close to described it as the rough and tumble of the studio. I mean in the studio, nothing is precious. If Leon or Frank Auerbach didn't think a picture worked, it was destroyed. It was as simple as that. And I would occasionally, with Leon, feel this great sense of responsibility, because he'd show me a new painting or a new drawing, and ask me what I thought. And on the one hand, I suppose that's very flattering. Here was a person, an artist, that I really revered asking what I thought as a nineteen year old or whatever, but I knew that what I said did matter, that there were very few people he was showing work to. And that, if I wasn't careful what I said, that picture might not exist next time because he was that ruthless. He'd be asking a small number of people for their thoughts, and it may have just been reinforcing something he felt already. And the very fact that you as an outside person had picked up on that same thing that maybe had been worrying him, confirmed that concern. But it really was a different way of looking at pictures.
I'd had a real revelation when I was very young, it might even have been before I went to university. The father of a friend of mine was a very serious collector, and I went with him to an auction viewing. And first of all, it was exciting to me. I didn't know that there were shops where you could buy pictures, but I discovered that there was Cork Street, and if you had the money, you could buy a picture. Well, that was a revelation, that they weren't all in museums. And then to go to an auction was a revelation that there was this art market that I knew nothing about. It wasn't part of my background. And I remember him showing me a picture and saying, “what do you think?” And me as a kind of budding art historian saying, “well, who's it by?” And he went, “irrelevant”. “Well”, I said, “well, when was it painted”. “Irrelevant?” And each question I asked, he would say, “irrelevant. What do you think of it?” And it was the antithesis of the way I had approached it- maybe through book learning or actually reading the labels on captions in a museum, where you want the information as an art historian, you want to understand the culture, you want to understand what's innovative or what it's about. And he was saying, “no, that's not important. What's important is, do you feel it in your gut? How does it affect you emotionally? The rest is just words….”
Well, for me, it's actually both. That's too reductive for me. The starting point ought to be something visceral that you've responded to, something that has affected you. But to get deeper, I think you do want to know what was the artist trying to do. I was thinking, what happened to figurative painting after the Second World War? How can you be an artist painting the figure given what's just happened? How do you reinvent it with a new sensibility that affects our time, that reflects our humanity? Idealised, glorified, beautiful figures don't work anymore because we're not these beautiful objects to be put on a pedestal, that we've just created all this horror. And so looking at Giacometti, looking at Francis Bacon, looking at Kossoff, these were the works I really felt.
But what's interesting now we're talking about the mid eighties and now we're nearly forty years on, what's extraordinary is the first time I went to see Leon in his home, he said, “why are you interested?” There was almost a sense that apart from a few people in his circle, there was no outside world that was really interested in what he was up to. To go and visit, as I did, his studio or Frank Auerbach’s studio, you felt like you were a very small, intimate group of basically fanatics because we were passionate about the work, or proselytisers. You spent your time telling people how amazing these artists were, often to kind of a blank reaction or no reaction. And it's actually extraordinary that Frank Auerbach has a show at the Courtauld at the moment. I wouldn't have dreamt that that would ever happen when I was there studying the work.
DAVID GLASSER
I don't want to interrupt you, but I think it's just interesting for our audience to understand that Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, these are great names today, but in the eighties, actually, they were not held in such high regard. They were working artists, but not necessarily the top of the tree. So when you talk about your engagement with them and, and the small cabal of people who were absolutely passionately engaged with the work, you were in the minority.
JAMES HYMAN
They weren't in the evening sales in Sotheby or Christie's. And I certainly felt at the time that it was outside the mainstream, that there was a sense of emotional engagement and a directness and a rawness. And yes, it was in Bacon as well, and it was celebrated in Bacon. But there was something visceral in Kossoff in particular - raw: that it felt kind of un-English. The idea that this is now integrated within a construction of the British tradition: you wouldn't have believed that. These were kind of miserable Jewish artists, you know? And I felt it in a very deep way. But that's because of my background. The idea that this would be shared by people from all backgrounds, I don't think would've crossed my mind in those days. I really felt I was sticking my neck out to support the people that I felt deeply and was moved so much by their work. The fact that Auerbach and others have the status that they now do, I don't think they or we ever felt that that was going to happen in the way it's mainstreamed.
DAVID GLASSER
Do you think that either Auerbach or Kosoff or any of these great names of today, years ago actually desired as a core objective, that level of recognition? Or do you think that they were really, as I feel today, that they were painting as much for themselves and expressing what they wanted to do, how they wanted to do it, and really not allowing the outside world to influence them very much?
JAMES HYMAN
I think that's true, and I think I probably need to slightly qualify what I just said, because I think in the art world now, it's become much more synonymous with the art market. There is more of a correlation between who's at auction, who the commercial art world stars are, and those getting recognition institutionally, that there is more of a symbiosis there. I think the qualification I'd like to make is Auerbach had a retrospective at the Hayward Gallery, 1978 I think it was, and in the 1980s did represent Britain at the Venice Biennale. Kossoff also represented Britain in the nineties, in the Venice Biennale. So it's not that they weren't getting prestigious shows or being written about by some of the greatest critics, it's just that it still seemed to be very niche. Yes, every now and then, there would be a greatly acclaimed show of Freud or Bacon or Kossoff, but they never seemed very central to what people were looking at or engaging with. They felt like they were pursuing their own course.
To go back to what you said, art in those days was not a possibility for a career. There would never have been an expectation that you would ever earn any money. You might become a teacher and earn money that way, but through your practice? You would never have counted on that as earning you a living. And if you look at the way that Lucian and Leon and Frank, the way that they have lived their lives, it hasn't changed. The fact that there are more zeroes at the end of their prices now doesn't change anything. They were all, day in, day out, working. That's all that mattered. I always loved that kind of obsession.
I think that one of the things that drives people is a sense that they can't do something. If something comes to you too easily, you almost don't value it. There are the artists who you just think, they've got an unbelievable facility and ability. You think of David Hockney. He is such a spectacular draftsperson. His drawing is apparently effortless. It seems to come easily, and I'm absolutely in awe of that. But in some ways, it's the opposite of the painters I was drawn to. What I was drawn to was actually the struggle. It's the constant failure that spurs them. And almost with Hockney, it's the opposite. That the reason he's accomplished so many different media, whether it's photography or video or stage design or whatever, it’s because he accomplishes things so easily. He wants the next challenge and the next challenge.
What's interesting about Kossoff or Auerbach’s work is it's one challenge that's a lifetime's project. Because it's difficult what they're trying to do. And because they're permanently dissatisfied. It’s like the great Merleau-Ponty essay, “Cezanne's Doubt”, that was an inspiration for Giacometti. What stands behind some of these artists is the idea that every picture is a failure. That's what keeps you going. Because if you've got it right, like Frenhoffer in “Le Chef d’Oeuvre Inconnu”, there'd be no story. This is what excited me. This teetering on the brink, this Beckettian sense that you’ve got to try again, fail better. You pick yourself up and you have another go and hope the next one will be better.
DAVID GLASSER
I must ask you, did you ever have any inclination through your childhood or through university years about actually ever being an artist?
JAMES HYMAN
Well, there are two parts to that. I did quite seriously draw and I took etching classes with Mark Balakjian. Mark was the person who did a lot of the etchings for Kossoff, Auerbach and Freud. And he did a class in Borough, which I used to go to and I did try and do my own work.
The difficulty you have, I think as an art historian is you can know too much. I think that in a way, you are more free if you've almost not studied the art of the past. I just felt everything I did was derivative, you know? And I think in some ways, ignorance is what you need. You need the skills. You can't be ignorant of a skillset. But I found it absolutely inhibiting thinking that whatever I was doing, I could see where it had come from. I gave that up. But what I had wanted to do very early on when I'd considered the art school route, was to be a photographer. And when I was 14 I borrowed my father's camera. He'd been given it, I think when he'd left the job, they'd given him as a present a camera, which he'd never used. And I put a roll of black and white film in and went out around Warren Street and Tottenham Court Road, and I took photos there. And one of them was of a newspaper salesman in a kiosk outside Warren Street Station, little kiosks, they used to sit in and sell the paper. And the slogan in those days was, “Everyone needs Standards”. It was a black and white, grainy, photo with this great slogan and this old man selling the papers. And I don't know how I found out about it, but each year, the GLC, the precursor to the Greater London Authority would have a photography competition. And they had one, and I was 14, and I entered it. And in the section I entered, I got first prize. I won it with the first film role of film I'd ever taken. And I developed it in the Dark Room, I developed it myself as well. And it's amazing aged 14 in 1981, to get £250. It was extraordinary. I was in the Jewish Chronicle, I was in the Evening Standard and being interviewed. And then it was shown at the Royal Festival Hall, and it toured around.
I think the first book I got on photography was a little pocket book called “On Reading”, and it was by Andre Kertes, and it was photographs of people around Paris or New York on balconies or in cafes. And each picture had somebody reading a book. And it was a beautiful. It was about documentary, street photography. I would take those sorts of pictures and I could see they'd come out of Kertesz or out of Cartier-Bresson. Again, there's this question of having your eye informed by others. But I do think it's a necessary stage to go through. But I never necessarily got to the other side to have a clear enough vision of my own.
But I very seriously wanted to be a photographer. And then when I took a different route, which wasn't art school, but university, I basically from the age of 18 to not quite today, and not quite the age of iPhones, but I just stopped taking photographs. I wasn't taking anything. I wasn't taking parties, I wasn't taking holidays. I did almost nothing. And I have a huge regret about that now because, for example, I had access to some amazing artist’s studios. And although they didn't really like being photographed, I did have a relationship with some of these people. And there might have been opportunities. I mean, it might've been intrusive, and it might've been inappropriate, but there might've been opportunities where I could have got out a camera. But I think having been serious and then not pursued it, I almost didn't want to think about it. Now I take photographs all the time.
But I was very delighted… some years ago I'd been to see Anselm Kiefer in his studio near Orange in the south of France and took photographs there. And what I hadn't appreciated until some years later when the Metropolitan Museum got in touch with me, he didn't really allow people to take photographs in those days. In a book that the Met did, they used my photographs of the studio. I was very excited that actually there was a use of some of my photographs in that way. But no, I just stopped, I stopped taking photographs. That's a long answer to your question, but basically, I don't draw paint or terribly seriously photograph anymore.
DAVID GLASSER
Let’s just veer back, if I may, to your art dealings. You worked with Helly Nahmad and that must have been an incredible experience on its own. I mean apart from working with a dynasty family within the art world, but working with really some of the best artworks that was ever available. And then you decided to go on your own, which was a brave step. Just tell us a little bit about how that started.
JAMES HYMAN
Well, as I mentioned earlier, when I did make that move, I started showing work by some of the painters that I had studied in my doctorate. It was a mixture of artists whose work I could get and I loved their work and, very soon, I got to represent some artists and estates. That I hadn't ever counted on. And that was very exciting. With Helly, we were dealing in blue chip impressionist and modern. But when I set something up, myself, I left him with no clients and no pictures, because there isn't a crossover really… I had to start more or less from scratch. But what I wanted to do is start from an area where I already had a reputation as an art historian or an art critic. An early show that we did was called “From Life” and included Bomberg and Kosoff and Auerbach and Uglow etc – and Tony Bevan was one of the younger people in there. And so that was true very much to the postwar figuration, which I'd been interested in.
What was particularly exciting is that Derrick Greaves - who was best known at the time as one of the kitchen-sink painters along with John Bratby, Jack Smith, and Edward Middleditch - he lived in Norfolk, but had made a visit to London and came to see me. He hadn't had a show in London for many years. And because I already knew him and there was some trust because I'd written about him. I came to represent him, and he became one of our most successful painters and one of the people that I got closest to. He very sadly died a couple of years ago, but the was still painting every day until the end, which was in his mid nineties. It was an incredible life. He was one of the people I was closest to. He's a fantastic underappreciated painter, but also somebody with a real gift of friendship. He was obviously a lot older than me but there didn't seem to be any kind of barrier between age or attitude. We'd have amazing conversations. He was very interested in politics, very interested in the state of the world. We could talk about Matisse, but we could also talk about the Gulf War or whatever it was. And I had a lot of love for him. He was an amazing guy. And, when it was his funeral a couple of years ago, I gave one of the eulogies. For me that was very special.
Yes the art world is about commerce because you're all trying to earn a living. But actually these relationships are very, very special. I had a close relationship with Dennis Creffield, who was one of David Bomberg's students. And towards the end of his life, I went regularly to sit for him. And again, that was a privilege to have that kind of relationship.
DAVID GLASSER
But there's more than just two artists who you have that, that bond with. I remember reading once about Bridget Riley, that you and Bridget Riley would have long conversations. Am I correct in that?
JAMES HYMAN
Yes, She came to talk at the Courtauld when I was a student. And I suppose because I was a favourite of my tutor, we went out for lunch afterwards with Bridget.
DAVID GLASSER
Who was your tutor at that time?
JAMES HYMAN
That was actually Margaret Garlake. I was very close to Margaret, and we went out for lunch afterwards, and I think Margaret then had to go back to teach. I just stayed talking with Bridget. And over the next few years, we became very close. I spent a lot of time with her at the studio, which was her home. We went together to an exhibition of hers that I'd helped curate in Germany and spent time there. And we were very close. One of my memories was the trick that she taught me, which you could probably now find on TikTok or Instagram, it'd probably be easy to find out, but it’s how you revive a rock hard, stale baguette. And I remember going around there for dinner, and I would always bring a bottle of red wine, which she would horrify me by basically sticking it on a really hot radiator, which she liked to do to warm it up. And while she did that she showed me this incredibly hard baguette, which she basically ran under the tap, made it soaking wet, and then put it in the oven. And miraculously you've got a fresh baguette at the end of it. So that was a lasting lesson from visiting Bridget!
But I think what was different, what you have to remember is that a lot of these artists were critically successful, but they weren't always in the public eye or commercially successful. And Bridget went through periods where the work just didn't sell. And so even in the 1990s when I would see her, it didn't feel like crowds of people beating on her door. It was, again, fanatics. She was, is, incredibly meticulous. You can see it in the paintings, how precise it is. But I wrote a catalogue essay for her, and I described a picture as having “red, blue, and green” in it. And because it was a catalogue for her, she obviously had to approve it, proofread it. And she sort of put a line through it. And she said, “no, it is made up of a red, a blue and a green”. There isn't just one red, blue or green. Everything about the work is about the relationship of one colour to the next. So I would always be learning lessons. I would be absorbing the whole time from talking to these people.
DAVID GLASSER
But you'd be giving back. Where I'm trying to come to is that to have a relationship with an artist is, is, is quite different in many ways. And yet exactly the same in many ways in terms of having a relationship with your next door neighbour or any friend you'd like. But the, but you must have brought to that relationship, your scholarship and your comprehension of the practice which would allow them to be neither defensive nor aggressive, but be relaxed and therefore very open about it, which is quite distinctive, I think.
JAMES HYMAN
It was a slightly paradoxical that these were people whose work I revered, but I've always probably been too opinionated. If I felt something, I would say it. I wasn't very good at self-censorship. And if they asked me my opinion on a picture, I would give them my opinion. T hey knew it was done out of respect, because that's why I was there. But I didn't hold back. And I remember with Bridget talking about a picture, I was talking about the way I think the pale greens were coming towards me. And on some of these zig pictures, it's very much to do with forward and back. It's not just the relationship of one colour to another, but actually what is coming towards you, what is receding. And I talked about the way this color was coming forward, and the next day when I spoke to her, she said, you know what? I was up for hours last night trying to work this out because it is not meant to come forward. And she kind of went back to her colour swatches to see whether she had got it right. And I mean, that's a very particular one about the eye. because it's perceptual abstraction. For her, these are never pure abstractions. It's about light through branches and a tree. It's about an experience of looking at light falling, patterns. it's visual. It's perceptual. It's not hard edge and it's not cold.
But I mean, one of the trickiest things - I had talked about the difference between her paintings on paper, her gouache works, and the paintings, the acrylics. Since the sixties, she's been very radical. She's had assistance. She will do the work on paper, often when she's on holiday in the south of France, and then her assistants can realise it as a big canvas. And I put that one of the things that animated the works is that it's not clinical. These are not sharp lines. She's not using tape. like some artists might do to get an absolute edge. There can be a waviness, which I thought was important when you look close, because it's an assertion of the hand, that these are handmade objects. And again, cross out, cross out, cross out. She said, “no, they're straight”. So, because they weren't meant to carry traces of the hand, because all that mattered was the overall effect, and the optics and the relationships. It wasn't about that at all. It might be that her hand had shaken slightly. But that wasn't a way of making the lines tremble. It wasn't a way of animating them.
So it was very interesting having these exchanges, just like I said, with Leon, he'd ask, “which of these is better?” And he'd say, “well, don't you think that one is better?” And I'd say, “Well, no, actually, I prefer this one.” But I wasn't afraid to do that. I didn't really think about it at the time because I was in a relationship with these people, but it's incredibly flattering. I was a something year old student, and the people you revere are asking you, what do you think? And it feeling like it mattered that it wasn't just a platitude, , was extraordinary. And it did matter, wasn't a platitude. I mean, they wouldn't have asked you if they didn't, if they didn't want to hear it. So, no, their absolute priority was doing their work. they were very grudging of their time, rightly, because what was more important than being in the studio for them. So, I always felt very privileged when I would be talking to these people, or with Frank, at one point, we corresponded and he's an incredible letter writer. I always felt incredibly grateful.
But as an art historian, you are doing something different. when I did my doctorate and I, then that was published as the Battle for Realism, I was very pleased that that was published by Yale University Press. It was a piece of history. I was writing as an art historian, not as a spokesperson, not as an amanuensis. I was trying to be objective about the people I loved. And I remember writing to them, I think it was quoting Barnett Newman, about art history. And Barnett Newman wrote, “Ornithology is Not for the Birds”, you know? And I felt art history is about culture. It's about visual history, about visual culture. But it's not necessarily for the artist to read almost because it's saying, this is why we think this work is significant. That may go against what they think is significant or what they think the work is about. They're trying to express themselves. And you are saying, well, actually, this had a particular resonance after the second World War. Well Frank is not trying to reflect his feelings of loss because he came over here as a child without his parents. He's not providing a commentary on what happened in the war. But the context in which his work was exhibited and written about was nevertheless shaped by those circumstances of the mid-century. And so, writing as an artist historian, it's completely different from what it's like struggling to get it to work plastically in the studio. At that point, the artists and I were on a different wavelength, because I'm speaking at that point to other art historians, thinking about why is this work important culturally?
DAVID GLASSER
But isn't it quite a unique phenomena that because you've stood in almost each part of the journey - you've practiced a little bit as an artist, you've studied to become an art historian. You've criticized, you've authored, you've dealt with the art not just as a dealer, but as an art historian. You've got all these different stop off points in the journey between production and ending up on either on a museum wall or somebody's wall. And you've been in each stage of it, which gives you a quite a unique perspective, I would've thought.
JAMES HYMAN
Yeah, you are, you are wearing different hats. I think that most recently it's been as an art dealer, but also as a collector and now as somebody who set up a charity. But I think what unites all of them is - hopefully - I convey my enthusiasm, my obsession, my sincerity, my belief. At the point that I was showing figurative art, British figurative art, there would've been easier areas of the market to have worked in. Now, when I'm supporting photography in Britain, through our collecting, but also through the charity - that's not something you do if your agenda is to make money. Because what I'm saying is that photographers in this country are not receiving the support that they should have. Whether that's institutionally, critically, or in terms of a collector base. Photography isn't supported in the way that it is in America or Germany or France or Italy or multiple other countries. We somehow have this blank. We can integrate studio ceramics into a narrative of British art. There are all sorts of other media that seem to now become part of a story. But there's still this resistance to photography, which I don't understand. So I think whether I'm trying to sell a picture in whatever medium or stage an exhibition or write about it, I'm conveying my belief.
People can decide. They may not care what I think about any subject, and that's absolutely fine. But all I can say is that I hope people see my sincerity. This is what I'm passionate about. Or I could have pursued multiple other areas. I could be spending my life selling Picasso prints, which are some of the greatest prints ever made. But it's not something that I would be excited by, or feel in a way that I'm contributing, because there are plenty of other people doing that. Whereas at the point I was looking at School of London, I felt there weren't a lot of voices. So maybe it would matter a bit. Or when I started showing Derrick Greaves and Edward Middleditch, I thought, well, the kitchen sink painters aren't well enough known. I believe in them. I want people to see them. And now with photography, I think, well, when a museum has a show of photography, the audience figures go through the roof. They are the most popular. And internationally, if we step back from being British or being Europeans, or being in the Western world, oil on canvas is bizarre. It is a weird medium.
What is more universal than photography? When I look at the audiences that we have at the Centre, or for photography shows that I've worked on, they tend to be very big, very young, very diverse, international. It's an incredibly accessible medium. And yet British museums still seem to have a blank against it. And collectors in this country seem to still have a problem with photography. They'll ask, for example, “how do we know how many were made?” Well, people seem to have understood the issue when it comes to printmaking or to sculpture, that there's an edition and if you abuse that, the market collapses. For self-interest as much as ethics, the artist, the dealer, has to stick to the editions. Well, photographs can also be editioned. And why should that be any less valid or credible than these other media that are also editioned. But somehow we have a hurdle about that.
As I said, people love photography exhibitions, but it doesn't always translate into collecting. And when it comes to museums, it's also to do with whether they have the curatorial expertise, because photography is one of the best value areas of the entire art market. You could build a great photography collection for the price of a third or fourth tier Renoir. It's as simple as that because the average price of British photographs is a couple of thousand pounds. Well, that's a lot of money, but it's not a lot of money in the art world, which is crazy in terms of pricing, has no relationship to almost any other area in life: the prices are just absurd. But photography is still at the lower end of that. I was saying earlier that painters in the past couldn't ever assume that they could earn a living through their practice. They might have to teach. That's very much where we are with photography. There are very few photographers in this country who could survive through their art alone, which is why they'll do commercial work, whether it's advertising or editorial. It's why they'll do teaching. That’s not to say that they don't love doing that work as well, but there is a necessity behind that.
So we've tried to do what we can as collectors, and there's a website, www.hymancollection.org, which has a lot of our British photography collection and we have set up a charity, and that's www.britishphotography.org. We are doing what we can both as collectors and as a founders of a charity to support photography in this country. Part of that is stepping in where perhaps museums haven't. we will collect young artists when we feel it really matters, , or even commission them. , we will give shows to very young artists who probably institutions wouldn't at that stage in their career again, thinking about what matters. And that's a thread thatas I say, it felt, when I was looking at the School of London early on, or the kitchen sink painters, it mattered that maybe I could help give more attention to the people I believed in. And I feel the same about photography. These are people that I'm passionate about who I don't think have received their dues institutionally, or necessarily critically, and so that to me is what's exciting. And that to me is why it's about a life, not just a, a livelihood. That is why I'm passionate about it, because in, in whatever small way, I like being in an area where I feel I can make a difference. It's why some of the painters that we showed somebody like Robert Medley - it would either be somebody quite late in their career or somebody who had died and we were then handling their estate. And I felt these people had been neglected. They might be neglected because fashion had changed. They might have been neglected because of a cult of youth, but to rediscover and represent an older generation figure, or in photography to be passionate about a medium that I felt was neglected. It's trying to create something that is not just an obsession and a life, but a feeling of potentially making a difference. I don't turn my nose up about people who are in the art world to make money because we all need to make money. And the fact that I'm doing some of the things I'm doing is because I have been relatively successful as an art dealer. That's the foundation for it. But for me, it's never just been about that. It's really been about a passion and about trying to make a difference if I can in, in the field in which I'm working.
DAVID GLASSSER
So tell us more, if you would, about this remarkable institution that you founded and its importance and your vision for it. It is very much your, and I should add your wife, because it's my understanding that it's very much a partnership - the passion is shared. Tell us more about the Centre for British Photography.
JAMES HYMAN
Well if I take a step back, because it comes out of our collecting of British photography. We were excited by what was happening in this country. We felt that artists were being underappreciated and we were getting very excited. Part of that support was obviously collecting the work and feeling that the institutions weren't really collecting in the way that they might, so we collected in a bigger way than is normal. We weren't just collecting what we could hang it. And that's obviously the sign of an obsessive collector is that you are buying more than you can actually exhibit or hang. And our collection was growing and growing and the big decision we made, I don't remember the exact date, but maybe it's a decade ago now, was to put our collection of British photographs online. And it's very unusual for a private collector to do that, in part because I think a lot of collectors today are investors or speculators, that there is that blurring now. And I'm not making a judgment about it. I'm just observing that people are buying for investment and you are not going to want to play your cards. You're not going to want to show what you've got because your end plan may be to put it into auction. So you don't actually want people to know quite what you've got. You just want it anonymously auctioned to make your money.
So we were very unusual in putting our collection online, but also unusual in it being almost institutional and wanting it to be an educational resource. And part of that came out of the conversations I'd had with American curators and they would say, “well, we know Bill Brandt's work. We know Martin Parr's work or Chris Killip's work, but who else should we be looking at?” And although it's a private collection and there are gaps, obviously by putting it online, it was a way of saying, well look, here's a link to the photographer's website. Here's an interesting article. Here's something that's happening. Here's an article that we've commissioned and an essay that we've done on an individual work.
It became a hub because there was no one place you could go to find out about British photography online. And we wanted to use the collection in that way. But what we hadn't really thought about, we were kind of naive about it, is that once you let institutions know what you've got, they will want to borrow from you. And we went from occasionally lending something to suddenly lending a lot. And you can see on the hymancollection.org website some of the recent shows that we've lent to. And it's a lot in this country and abroad. And I love that because I want the work to be seen. And we very early on decided, for example, that we wouldn't make a charge for any of our loans. Well, a lot of collectors and institutions do make a charge. We didn't want to. The whole point was to get the work out there.
From that sort of public educational side, we then did a couple of big donations of photographs to institutions. We donated 125 works to the Yale Center for British Art, and we donated a hundred works to the Bodleian Library. And the reason for those institutions, apart from them being prestigious, they're teaching institutions as well. They're not just museums or galleries. And it was very important to us that there was that dimension as well. And they weren't so enormous in terms of what they were doing with photography, that the work would just get buried. That it felt like it could be a catalyst. And it was a way of demonstrating these institutions engagement with photography, which wasn't something that they were associated with. Again, it felt like this was something that would make a difference, that could be a catalyst for them. Then getting a curator of photographs or a way of waving the flag so that then other people might donate work. Again, it felt like it might make a difference.
Obviously the thing in this country that is a disincentive, unlike in America, if there when you give, you can get some advantage in the tax system. There are tax breaks to encourage giving to museums. In this country, we don't have that culture. We don't have the same incentives or history of incentives. So to make a donation to a museum is a donation. There isn't necessarily, commercially an upside. But we were delighted to do that as a way of stimulating engagement,. With the Yale Center for British Art, I thought, well one of the things is that often it takes acclaim abroad for something to get validated at home. We're not necessarily good at celebrating what's under our nose. We'd rather bring something in from abroad and say, how wonderful than go to Derby or go to Bath or go to Brighton and look at what's going on there. So it felt like it was making a difference. But having had the collection online, which was almost museum-like, and lending more to other institutions and then giving to institutions - although when you do things in life, I don't think things are necessarily planned - I'm not strategic in that sense. But looking back on it, sometimes things have an inevitability. And in early 2020 we decided to set up this foundation to support photography in Britain. And in a way, I can see now that it kind of was the next stage, but it wasn't planned as such. It just these things happen. Just like I didn't know that having the website would generate lots of loans and raise the profile of the collection that way. Anyway, we set up the charity in 2020. We then had the pandemic.
I had some very good advisors. And I think what's good about having advisors is getting different views. There's no point if all we were doing is saying the same thing. I'd get one person saying, “what you have to have is a centre in London. It needs to be prestigious. You're gonna do something with British photography. It's really gotta make a statement. You need a centre, you need bricks and mortar. It needs to be in London.” And you get somebody else who says, “you mustn't build a monument. It needs to be grassroots. It can't be all about London. It needs to be local, it needs to be regional.” And I was in a position of kind of agreeing with all the advice, and so how do you square that circle? The answer was we wanted to set somewhere up in London, but work very closely with the regions so that either our shows can go to the regions or actually to be a hub for regional shows coming to London. Because there are fantastic shows that never get here. And so in the last year we worked with the National Trust. We've done something with Stills Gallery in Edinburgh. We've done something with John Hansard. And it is really important that we are part of this kind of public offering.
What's also been important is that we opened a centre in Jermyn Street. We had 8500 square feet on three floors. We could have five exhibitions at one time, and being free of charge we had huge audiences - young, diverse. Our programming reflects that. Although it's generational in what we're showing, I think we were very welcoming. But to explain what our intentions were: I had this dream of a centre that would support British photography, but that’s just one person with this eccentric vision. What we wanted to do was to have a proof of concept, to say, look, this is what we could have. This is the audience for it. Look at the press coverage. We had fantastic acclaim for what we were doing. It is now tangible. Look what we could deliver. We took on a two year lease with a view to using that as a proof of concept, those two years to get the fundraising we need. Because the intention I had was rather like Sue Davis, who was the founder of the Photographers Gallery in the early seventies. She worked at the ICA previously, but became very, very obsessed with doing something for photography. And within a couple of years - it was obviously a different world - but within a couple of years it was funded by the Arts council. So there was an individual not trying to create a monument to themselves, but to create a public space. And I want to do the same. This has never been about creating a private museum or it necessarily being about our collection even.
I think you need a founder, you need somebody with the vision, but ultimately the success of the charity is that one day it's independent of me. I'm not the director, I'm not a trustee. It's independent. It stands on its own feet in terms of its direction, its curatorial program, but also in terms of its funding.
Where we're up to now is we had this amazing year of exhibitions in Jermyn Street and tremendous press reviews and lots of visitors, and then slightly had the rug pulled from under us in that we thought we would be there until this time next year, but the landlords are pulling down the entire block. So we had to leave earlier than we'd ever anticipated. In terms of what we've delivered, I'm absolutely delighted. It surpassed what I thought we would achieve. But in terms of the fundraising for our permanent home, as I say, the intention was two years in a temporary home, fundraise, then get into a permanent home. We've now got this sort of in-between stage where we are still flat-out. We launched a grants program, last year we did a couple of open calls, one of which got 1100 applicants, the other many hundreds. We've just launched our grants program and got 674 applicants. And we're about to announce the first one of our grants. We've also done the show with David, and I'm grateful to David for asking us to do that. We've got this wonderful show of photography at Ben Uri at the moment. We'll be working with outside organizations. So, being out there, whether it's with outside venues or a couple of festivals we want to work with.
And we're about to launch our touring exhibitions programme. So there's a lot we're going to be continuing to do, but we're in this, in-between stage. It's not a seamless transition from one space to the next. And I love curating. But a lot of my time at the moment is trying to work on the fundraising because at the moment I'm the main funder, and that's not sustainable long-term. But nor is it desirable because I don't want this to be about me. I want this to be bigger than me. And it's not good. We've got eight trustees and I'm one of them, but it's not good if it's too dependent on that one person. I want there to be a day where it's independent of me. I would say to people “if you believe in what I'm doing, you are backing me. But actually the vision is much bigger than, than me, than our collection.”
But to go back to the collection it's been a very exciting thing because when people know that you are collecting they mention friends of theirs who are artists and you get a lot of unsolicited emails as well. But it's all about discovery. And I suppose to link this back to the beginning of the conversation, I'm still a heart and art historian. I wear all these hats that David talks about, but at the end of the day, what I love is standing in front of a picture, sitting in front of a picture and feeling that there's a relationship there. So there's a kind of auto didacticism about it: I love discovering a new artist, or when I acquire a work, that's when the research begins. And I love finding obscure magazines on eBay and an article that somebody wrote in 1975 or whatever it is. And that discovery as an artist historian is still one of the things that drives me. I like discovering a young artist, but I also like discovering material from the past or working with archives. One of the things we also want to be doing is acquiring archives so that we can safeguard work. Because I think one of the concerns with some of the older photographers or actually their families when they're no longer around is what happens to all these boxes of negatives and contact sheets and work prints and framed up works that are filling the garage. And you hear horrifying stories, not just in photography, but in painting of things ending up on a skip.
There's an enormous responsibility of taking on an archive because you've got to have art storage. You don't have the luxury of just having it in a damp attic or shed. You need to catalogue it, digitize it, look after it, try and get it seen, research it. So it's an enormous commitment in terms of time and money to take on an archive, but it's absolutely essential.
And so one of the things that we're also developing, whether it's through our collection or through the activities of the charity, we are very mindful of how do we safeguard this work and how can we then encourage scholarship around it. One of the things that I want to be doing is working with different higher education institutions on sponsored PhDs that people can actually engage with this material. I think one of the things about the charity is that there are two kinds of outcome. One is we have our own physical space and it's exhibition driven, which is what really excites me because I love that curatorial process. And there's definitely an audience for it. But the other thing is these outcomes in terms of support, which is either archival projects or grants for realising bodies of work where they do need some money in order to be completed. There's a lot of ways we can engage with and without a space which I'm very excited about. But the direction of travel is very much that I would like to secure a permanent home. And I do think it's needed. I do think it needs somebody waving the flag in that way. And there is definitely a void. There is a space for this.
DAVID GLASSER
I don't know the photography side of life. Did Tate have a big photography collection and curators?
JAMES HYMAN
No, No. The Tate have historically been very, very poor. You could get into the Tate if you were Richard Long or Gilbert and George. If you were conceptual and photography was a tool rather than a practice, fine. But until donations like Eric Franks's collection of photographs of London, a documentary collection, and until relatively recently when they had a photography curator, it was never something they engaged with. It's still not really something they understand. Despite having had some great photography shows, it's not institutionalized. It's almost incidental that they have these great shows, shows. And again, as with the V&A, you've got photography competing with other media. Then you've got the Photographers Gallery that is obviously the most established and best known. And of course it does things that engage with its community in Westminster. And it did a Chris Kilip show last year. It's got a Bert Hardy show now. But again it's not its agenda. Most of it shows aren't anything to do with Britain and that's great because it's good that there's somewhere in London that's bringing Daido Moriyama, or whoever, from abroad, and giving them a space in London. But there's nowhere that is specifically dedicated, in the way that we're trying to be, to supporting practice in this country.
DAVID GLASSER
Well, James, I can only tell you a few little things, if I may. Number one is you are absolutely correct that photography exhibitions are a magnet for young visitors. Number two is that museums do not give photography the same level of, or, or a proportionate level of attention as they do the traditional artworks. And we are just as guilty. And the exhibition that we are partnering with you and the British and the Centre for British Photography is beating records. I can tell you it's exceptionally well received. And for anybody who has not yet had the chance to visit, you only have six more days. Only six more days. This Wednesday to Friday, and the next Wednesday to Friday. And it's a beautiful exhibition, beautifully curated with fantastic photographs. The third thing I would say to you, James, is that I think your concept is proven. I know from my visits to the centre, it was always busy. You've got the facts and figures, all power to your elbow. I think everybody here will share with my view is that I just find this, this hour has shot by: really inspirational, I mean, fascinating but inspirational. If I had a hat, I would take it off to you.
I wish you and Claire every success as I'm sure we all do, and we look forward to hearing more and more from the Centre for British's Photography. And just wish you every success. And thank you much indeed for sharing your time and your life experiences with us. Really, really grateful.
JAMES HYMAN
Thank you. Thank you David, for inviting me, and thank you for the opportunity to put on the exhibition.
DAVID GLASSER
Well, it's, it's our, our privilege. Thank you much, ladies and gentlemen, six more days. That's all you have to see this exhibition. Then we have an unusual thing for the Ben Uri is instead of asking for people to donate money, we're asking people to donate some artworks and anything else to sell that the money can go to the life and death causes that are all around us. And then an exhibition called As from there to here, which is about immigrant artists from all over the world that have made their careers and enriched our British visual culture. I wish you all a very good evening, and thank you much indeed for joining us. And again, James, thank you.
JAMES HYMAN
Thank you, David. Thank you everybody.