This issue’s thematic dossier is something quite new in comparison with the usual format of Revista ARTA. After previous issues dedicated to visual genres (painting, sculpture, photography, urban art), to local schools of painting (the Cluj school of grey, the 1980s generation), to movements like postmodernism and feminism, or to international events like the Venice Biennale, we thought it might be interesting, and even useful, to open the pages of our magazine to the international art milieu, in order to allow a better knowledge, in Romanian, of some prestigious and influential national art scenes.

And what could be more tempting nowadays than British art, with its creative spirit, so unleashed and provocative, and its competitive taste, so courageous and dangerous? The world of visual arts in London remains for the time being – as the famous City district for the financials – a sort of Mecca of our domain, to which lots of artists, gallery owners, dealers and curators from all parts of the world are constantly attracted, whether they are established or beginners. Are not the universities of London the most coveted in the world, towards which a river of students of all nationalities flow in haste every year ? From the YBA (Young British Artists) generation, from the 1980s up to the present, the language of visual and commercial radicalism in art is the Londonian, the same way as the lingua franca of today is and remains English.

We owe to our young collaborator Cristina Bogdan, Lecturer in Art Theory in London, this extremely interesting thematic dossier about the British art world, with its ups and downs, wherefrom many Romanians will have something to learn, be they artists, professors, curators, critics, historians, or gallery owners. Produced with personal efforts and without any sponsorship from a British institution, the file can be an extremely useful instrument for either a young aspirant, to prepare him or her for the British utopias and sirens, or for a mature person, to comfort him or her from the illusions of a place too much dreamed of not to hide in it the warning of a famous Latin formula: Hic sunt leones!

Magda Cârneci, Editor-in-Chief