X YPP Book

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curators, and gallerists, while their work is promoted and contextualised by
the professional press. Apparently, the Award had also brought the question of
young art back into discourses of art theory as well. Every year the YPP-inspired
polemics leads us to rethink the status of a young artist, identify the trends in
painting, and examine the individual aspirations.
The YPP Award had also contributed to the rehabilitation of painting as such. In
the context of contemporary art, painting has been regarded as somewhat
secondary: too old-fashioned, too traditional, not conceptual enough. The
popularisation of young painters eventually led to the contemporary painting
itself becoming popular again. The Award had demonstrated that contemporary
painting can be just as important a participant in the contemporary art scene as
any other discipline, and it can be innovative and relevant without loosing touch
with the tradition. Art theorists, artists, and viewers find the geography of the
Award particularly advantageous as it allows them to discover the specificities
that are not only national, but also regional. This way the capital city gets to
know more about the lesser known artists from other towns, while Lithuanians
get more acquainted with Latvians and Estonians, and vice versa. The artists
themselves thus have an opportunity to meet each other and develop creative
partnerships that often end up in group shows and successful collaborations.
Apart from making the young artists visible to the art professionals and cultural
press, the YPP Award also performs an educational mission. In their
determination to bring the art of painting to a wide audience through the use of
understandable language and attractive format, the Award organisers are
staying true to a general tendency towards the democratisation of culture that
aims to oppose the image of the art world as a hermetic, elitist, and
self-referential sphere. While the forms of this democratisation remain a matter
of an ongoing debate, one thing is sure: it is already having an undoubtedly
positive effect on the visibility of the young artists. Every year the Award
becomes eagerly awaited for by both artists and gallery-goers — in fact, it has
now turned into one of the most popular and most visited annual events of the
Lithuanian art world. One would like to believe that the project will justify its
international status and will find its audiences in other countries as well.
The last decade saw a variety of participants. Some of them have made it to the
YPP finalist shows only to fade into an oblivion afterward. However the majority
of the finalists managed to remain on track, and their names keep reappearing in
the finalist lists year after year. Quite a few of them have not only outgrown their
‘young artist’s’ clothes, but brought their art to a new level and joined the ranks
of the most influential Lithuanian painters. Their artworks are now noticeable in
all the major events of contemporary art across the whole Baltic region, and their
names appear even in a global context of contemporary art fairs and
competitions. And, of course, in addition to the ‘basis’ of the established names,
each year brings some new discoveries and surprises. The history of the YPP
Award can thus be seen as a concise history of contemporary Lithuanian painting.