Tacita Dean facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Tacita Dean CBE, RA
Tacita Dean photographed by Oliver Mark, Berlin 2012
Born	Tacita Charlotte Dean 1965 (age 59–60) Canterbury, Kent, England
Nationality	British
Education	Falmouth University Slade School of Fine Art
Known for	Conceptual art, installation art

Tacita Charlotte Dean is a British artist born in 1965. She is known for her amazing work, especially with film. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1998 and won the Hugo Boss Prize in 2006. In 2008, she became a member of the Royal Academy of Arts. Today, she lives and works in both Berlin, Germany, and Los Angeles, California.

Early Life and Schooling

Tacita Dean was born in Canterbury, Kent, England. Her father was a lawyer, and her grandfather, Basil Dean, started Ealing Studios. This studio was famous for making movies.

Tacita went to Kent College in Canterbury. After that, she studied at Falmouth University and finished in 1988. Later, from 1990 to 1992, she earned a master's degree from the Slade School of Fine Art.

Tacita Dean's Art Career

In 1995, Tacita Dean's art was shown at a big event called the Venice Biennale. She was part of a group known as the "Young British Artists" (YBAs). Even though she was in this group, her art was quite different from some of the other famous YBAs.

In 1997, Dean moved to London. Around this time, she started showing pieces of magnetic tape. These tapes were cut to show how long a certain sound lasted, like a raven's cry. In 2001, she had her own show at Tate Britain called Tacita Dean: Recent films and Other Works.

For the 2004/2005 season, Dean designed a huge picture for the Vienna State Opera. It was part of an art series called Safety Curtain.

In 2000, Dean moved to Berlin, Germany. She has lived there ever since, working from her studio. She was also an artist who got to stay and work at the Getty Research Institute in 2014 and the Menil Collection in 2024.

Tacita Dean is a founder of savefilm.org. She actively works to protect and save the use of film in art.

Exploring Her Artworks

Film Art and Style

Tacita Dean is most famous for her films made with 16 mm film. However, she also uses other art forms like drawing, photography, and sound. Her films often use long shots and steady camera angles. This helps create a calm and thoughtful feeling for the viewer.

She has also written several pieces that she calls 'asides'. These writings go along with her visual art. Since the mid-1990s, her films have not had spoken commentary. Instead, they use quiet sound effects that fit the visuals.

Themes in Her Films

The sea was a common theme in Dean's art, especially in the 1990s. During this time, she explored the story of Donald Crowhurst. He was an amateur sailor who tried to sail around the world alone. His journey ended sadly. Dean made several films and drawings about Crowhurst's story. She used ideas like the ocean, lighthouses, and shipwrecks to add meaning to her work.

In 2008, she returned to her love for the sea with her film Amadeus (swell consopio). This film was made for the Folkestone Triennial, which is an art show that happens every three years.

In 1997, Dean created a sound piece. It was about her unsuccessful search for a famous artwork called Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson. This artwork is located in the Great Salt Lake in Utah.

Her 1999 film Sound Mirrors is named after large listening devices. These devices were built in the 1920s and 1930s in the Kent countryside. They were used to detect German aircraft coming in.

In 2000, Dean received a scholarship to Berlin. She moved there with her partner, artist Mathew Hale. She became interested in Germany's history and buildings. She made films about famous places like the Palast der Republik. Her 44-minute film Fernsehturm is set in the spinning cafe of the East Berlin television tower. This tower was finished in 1969. Other projects focused on important German figures like W. G. Sebald and Joseph Beuys.

More recently, Dean has made films about artists and thinkers from the last fifty years. These include Mario Merz, Merce Cunningham, Leo Steinberg, Julie Mehretu, Claes Oldenburg, and Cy Twombly. For example, Craneway Event (2008) is a film about Cunningham working with his dancers.

In 2006, Dean filmed Kodak inside a Kodak factory in France. This factory was the last one in Europe to make 16-mm film. It closed down just a few weeks after her visit.

In 2013, Dean showed her film JG in London. This 26-minute film was made in both color and black and white. It explored her interest in Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty and her friendship with science-fiction writer J. G. Ballard. In the film, you can hear parts of writings and letters from Ballard and Smithson, read by actor Jim Broadbent.

Photography and Painting Works

In 2001, Dean published a book called Floh (which means "flea" in German). This book had two parts and used old photographs she found at flea markets. Dean wanted these pictures to keep their mystery.

In 2002, Dean created Czech Photos. This was a collection of over 326 unedited black and white photographs. They showed a city just before big changes, looking a bit old-fashioned even when they were taken.

Washington Cathedral (2002) is a series of over 130 old postcards. They show different imagined versions of the Washington, D.C. cathedral before it was finished.

Palindrome was a newspaper project from 2002. It celebrated the special date 20.02.2002, which reads the same forwards and backwards. This idea came from numbers painted by Marcel Broodthaers.

In 2005, Dean started a series using old postcards of trees. She painted out all the background details with white paint, making the trees stand out.

Work on Cy Twombly

In 2007, Dean met artist Cy Twombly in Rome. She later gave talks and wrote about his art. Her art piece GAETA (fifty photographs plus one) was made in 2008. It featured photos taken in Twombly's house and studio in Italy. She also made a short film about him in 2011 called "Edwin Parker" (which was Twombly's real name). In 2021, her show "Sigh Sigh Sigh" in Rome included many works related to Twombly.

Special Art Projects

Dean has been asked to create art for several important places. These include London's former Millennium Dome, the Sadler's Wells Theatre, and for Cork, Ireland. She has also spent time as an artist-in-residence at places like the Sundance Institute and the Wexner Center for the Arts.

In 2011, Dean was the 12th artist chosen for the Unilever Series at the Tate Modern. She created FILM, an 11-minute silent film. It was projected onto a huge 13-meter screen. This film aimed to show how important film is as an art form and to encourage people to protect it.

Awards and Recognition

After her 1996 film Disappearance at Sea, Tacita Dean was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1998. She has won many other awards, including the Aachen Art Prize (2002), the Hugo Boss Prize (2006), and the Kurt Schwitters Prize (2009). In 2011, a famous art critic named Blake Gopnik listed Dean as one of "The 10 Most Important Artists of Today."

She was given the title Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2013. This was for her contributions to British art around the world. In 2019, she received the TenTen artist commission and the Cherry Kearton Medal and Award.

Personal Life

Tacita Dean is married to artist Matthew Hale. They have one son.

Exhibitions

• Tacita Dean: Blind Folly. October 11, 2024 through August 19, 2025. The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas

Filmography

See also

In Spanish: Tacita Dean para niños

• Ptolemy Dean