Tate | Young Tate: Exam Help: Relationship

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Relationship

A relationship is a connection or association between people, things or ideas.

Many artists, including Tracey Emin, Francis Bacon and Tracey Moffatt, explore the personal relationships between people (family members, lovers, friends or enemies) in their work.

The relationship that individuals have with wider society or with a specific culture is a theme often dealt with by artists exploring their identities. For example artist Jason Evans’ photographs explore his relationship, as a black British man, with traditional British culture. Other artists address the relationship between different communities, cultures or nations.

How objects relate to each other, and the way colours, shapes and textures affect each other, are concerns dealt with by artists interested in the formal relationships between things. Bernd and Hilla Becher group industrial buildings together, highlighting the relationship between similar structures. Sculptor Barbara Hepworth looks at the relationship between different forms and the space that they inhabit. While many painters, such as Piet Mondrian and Ellsworth Kelly, explore the relationship between colour and composition.

Conceptual artists address a less tangible relationship in their work. They investigate a relationship of ideas. For example in Clock (One and Five), English/Latin Version (1965), Joseph Kosuth explores the relationship between our impression or understanding of a clock, and its physical reality.

Relationship

A relationship is a connection or association between people, things or ideas.

Personal relationships

Relationships between cultures and communities

Formal and conceptual relationships