Turner Prize

Oh and Mark, care to expand on that me and Tims reaction to art/music being opposites? Interested!

No, it's obviously not saying that, as that would be mean and crass and Creed comes across as neither. But it might be saying partly that the aesthetic qualities of art feed into and cause the ligfest, and that overcomplexity in art leads therefore to its corruption, and that maybe making art so simple as to be almost not-art is quite a good idea. Well that's what I get from it anyway. (What Creed 'actually' thinks isn't really important.)

sadly i have to go meet someone in town RIGHT NOW THIS SECOND sarah: it just sort of jumped into my head anyway, which is why i said "DISCUSS" (in case someone cd see why i "gut-felt" it)

it was one of the things we started to discuss at the Brains Trust table on Sat, but we got bogged down in a defn of modernisn because we are goofy egghedZoR (arose out of eg that old saw: pinefox is a modernist for books but not for pop)

my attitude to nu-art and music is the same: i like it all, all the time (except sometimes); and totally different to my attitude to eg writing (it is all terrible present co.excepted)

Part of human evolution is the acceptance of the challenge of detail in art. We appreciate figurative detail, so why not conceptual detail? In C20 art, the various hypotheses represented by all the art movements make up the entire century; the basics furnish you with plenty of scope to process conceptualism (sheesh, I know that sounds dry).

Okay, Mark, let's start with bad art in Turner this year: some of the Richard Billingham bits were tosh. I'm thinking of the photographs that were not part of the family series: one of a girl lying on sand, another of some unspecified landscape. They seemed too random. I like to see interconnectivity and a narrative in my art - classic writer business, I'm afraid. Billingham is in a difficult place with his work right now because his work is now part of the mainstream and he has not yet moved on/expanded on that initial spark. I know why: he is scared shitless. He has created something so instantly recognisable and iconic with the 'ray's a laugh' series (a lot of the framing is based on, say, Velasquez paintings) and is now hitting a wall of intimidation and insecurity as his reknown snowballs quicker than he can actually cope with it. He feels accidentally famous, and maybe that's a certain lack of sophistication catching up with him. He is so down-to-Earth as to be tough on himself, so he's going to have trouble for a while, and then pull out of it, because he is a really fantastic artist.

I say this as an *extreme* insider, incidentally: a close friend of mine dated R for almost two years, I've interviewed him twice, I'm not so removed from people who grew up like he did and I've known his gallerist for five years. I've had a lot of opportunity to talk to Richard about his work over the past three years and I came to it because I found his initial shows to be visceral and arresting. My only question - is this a voyeur? - was unequivocally answered NO the first time I read about him.

What is all this shit with insecurity? Are Sarah and I insecure because we're scared we don't know as much about art as you do, or because we don't like the things you like? Stop patronising us - while I'm happy to admit you're right, I don't know as much about art as the majority of you, my reaction to art is no less worthy than yours. Perhaps, as I'm totally uninvoled in the whole thing, my opinions are a worthwhile addition to, say, Suzy's, as I'm coming froma totally different direction.

Mark S, I am really not aiming my "faker" accusations at you or anyone else on this thread (though, as I said earlier, some of you may well be faking it but only yourselves will know), so why the need to launch accusations of insecurity? Apologies to everyone if I've read things wrongly.

it's OK MarkC, Suzy has quit with the accusations of insecurity in favour of telling us that she is an exalted insider :)

"Evolution" is a big fat trap.

You're saying Billingham is something of a one-trick pony then, Suzy?

Apologies Suzy, my misread, you're saying he's fantastic and will come up with something better later when he's got through the difficult patch. I believe you, and very much hope you're right. But how do you know he's a fantastic artist not a one-trick pony (albeit a great trick)?

There's nothing really exalted about it, I can assure you. Jeez, if all it took to be one of those people was to get all the canapes without looking like you're chasing your dinner and to drink the champagne without spilling, while successfully being dealt into the conversation Matthew Collings is having with four other people, then I'd have cinched it by now obviously :-P. But I was once COMPLETELY UNINVOLVED in modern art. What got me in there? Cindy Sherman, Jenny Holzer, Frida Kahlo (one surrealist autobiographical self-portraitist, one droll word-based cynical realist, one dresser-upper whose costume changes are all about YOU).

BTW I thought Madonna saying 'motherfuckers' was totally cheesy, but not half as cheesy as the stuff she said *before* the expletive. And she owns two Kahlos. Bitch.

Oh, Tim: answer is because of the way he talks about his art, also his belief that there is nothing else he can do. See what I mean about the burden of success being hard for someone who's never known anything but failure? He will succeed simply because he has no choice.

The Madonna speech was ghastly.

That Martin Creed...he copied my drawing pin idea! Just changed it to blu-tack, ha ha yeah very clever...didn't think I'd spot it did you Creed? Oh wait, who turned the lights out?

Whoever fucked up Tom's Minimalism thread is a genius. Much better than my pathetic idea for an answer.

It would be interesting if someone cut the power during one of Creed's shows

if it makes people think critically it is a good thing.

who cares who wins the grammy or whatever?

mark c i didn't think you tht i was a faker and i wouldn't be cross if you had, much. i know zip abt creed, and have no strong feelings about "art": except to say i don't think art is deep (even when it's powerful). i don't think anything much is deep; i think if you're getting cross because something is "pretending" to be deep when it utterly isn't (HE PUTS BITS OF BLU-TAC ON THE WALL!) then this is a problem you are bringing to the picnic, not a problem already in the hamper (there are lots of problems in the hamper btw, but this "deep" thing is not one of them). I said "insecurity" in quotes because i don't think it's actually the right word to characterise the issue. Unnecessary defensiveness is (maybe?) slightly better (if the emphasis is on "unnecessary" — ie you have nothing to be so defensive about). (I bet you know more abt art than I do...)

Suzy, on the other, has a right to defend her expertise as being knowledge and not prima facie a. self-delusion, b. vacant snobby posturing (esp. as it's manifestly neither).

I'm kind of ambivalent abt the gleeful take- that-fuXoRs response, even though I sort of share it on kneejerk instinct: because I think it renders something a bit inaccessible which actually ought to be clearer. Which is that i. "I could have done that" is, as an expression of hostility and anger, really a rather weird kind of self- hatred, and I wish more of the post- Duchampians would work more on the implications of this (ie more Turner Prizes for everyone everywhere: use it as an energy, not a stick to beat Creed [ie yrself] with); ii. Oh sod, what was ii? Yeah, that I think it's REALLY REALLY rare that the makers themselves are full-on ten-gallon fakers. Yeah, fucked-up manipulative fuckers with complex self-destructive tides sometimes (why hullo johnny rotten you fine musician you), but actually working at someting real they couldn't do or show or explain or energise another way.

Also: "The Emperor's New Clothes" is a hateful little story.

Also also: television is better than art because art makes poor television (but not vice versa obv).

Traps = things you move to to explain the whole megilla which actually remove the purpose of unveiling the megilla in the first place (as opposed to going straight to the traps).

fuXoR suXoR xuXoR i just thought of a quick and clear way to say what i wanted to say: the Take-That-Suckers thing is a problem because it's part of a protective scenester self-defensive kneejerk of PRETENDING TO BE SHALLOW

Traps = something you might get caught in and never get out of as well...

The Emporors New Clothes is only a hateful story if you are telling it from the Emp's P.O.V. In Hans Christian Andersen it is shown as the triumph of the small child, of the free thinker - and also the conman/trickster. Never liked the Sinead O'Connor song though.

Emp N.C. is a great story but a hateful - or rather misinterpreted - metaphor. It's surely a story about looking beyond your learned response. If the learned response is deference, iconoclasm is appropriate. When the learned response is to cite the ENC story, the actual lesson of the ENC story is to move the conversation somewhere else entirely. Surely?

Have to interject at this point that the one Owada album I've heard is really pretty wonderful. Saying it's "literally minimalist math-rock" is... well, it's _literally_ true, but I can imagine seeing that description and thinking of something very different. Let's just say I've played it a lot on the radio and put songs from it on mix tapes...

It sounds very Buzzcocks/Wire No-Wave hence I think a lot of people here might like it.

But Suzy, we all like S Club 7 (except for Katie who got lucky on Saturday when ver Club got lost trying to find the Betsey. I told them not to let Bradley to do their map reading for them...)

I have to admit my reaction from the 10 secs or so in the Turner Prize TV show was "christ spare us", and the lyrics don't inspire me with much confidence. I'm interested as to why he chose the rock-band format though.

suzy - people aren't having a problem with 'conceptual detail'. it just appears to me that there is a lack of just that (i.e. the DETAIL) in these works. a lump of blu-tak or a flashing light has little or no figurative, technical or conceptual detail

Martin Creed was on the C4 news last night and did really well, looking chuffed to bits on top of everything. The lights alernate five seconds off, five seconds on. News person goes, 'blink and you'll miss it, eh?' as lame attempt at humour. MC replies: 'actually blinking is a lot faster than that so you can't really say that!'

Also 'conceptual detail' is all about, 'why only the one work?' (answer: because Creed wants the observer to consider their relationship to ONE work rather than have them compare how a few works react against one another) which is a curatorial choice. His, as his exhibitions usually only have one work in them. It's 'why? rather than 'what?'.

His exhibitions must be a great laugh. Though if the first punter bought the exhibit, I bet all the rest would stare chin-strokingly at the empty space before declaring it "a poignant study of art in the void" or somesuch.

***I am only being facetious***

(btw, has anyone got any tips abt removing the very old martin creeds from my plastered and whitewashed kitchen wall: they leave an oily mark and often take material with them?)

Possibly I should put a little red paper spot by the holes and boast about how much I sold the MCs for...

Just remove the Creeds and then daub over the mark a bit of white paint. A very hot washcloth will also remove the Creeds.

or apparently some WD-40 followed by detergent, although this sounds like a very bad idea! :)

Fantastic lip-smacking distaste from the Daily Telegraph:

"The other shortlisted artists were: Mike Nelson, favourite with bookmakers to win, who works with rubbish and exhibited a labyrinth of planks; Richard Billingham, who exhibited photos and videos of his family, notably his alcoholic father who lives in a Glasgow slum; and Isaac Julien, who exhibited short films featuring homosexual cowboys."

Obviously we expect the Telegraph to fail miserably in the fact- checking department, but I'm disappointed that it's somehow OK for their condescending tone to be acceptable analysis of art, when you'd have kittens if they condescended around left-wing politics or some other interest. RB's family live in Cradley Heath, Birmingham, not Glasgow. The other descriptions of work are reductive and mean- spirited: Mike Nelson's installations comprise a number of elements, none of which are rubbish/garbage; Isaac Julien's cowboys in desert is one of two works on display.

There is a better argument for saying that yBa work = made of rubbish. In the late 1980's, when many of the artists of the Freeze generation were leaving art college, they used whatever was to hand, a lot of which materials were others' castoffs. In the Thatcherist climate of the time, using such materials was a fact of life and the political climate informed the work in many ways.

Yesterday I went to Tate Modern with Nick Currie (he was in town for an eye op) and we had a discussion about the nature of elites (they are fluid, not static, and there are many forms of The Elite). Why, for example, do we not bat an eyelash over the elite of sport (unless they misuse their status to bash Asians) but find ourselves gnashing and wailing about the elite of the art world. Is it envy, or something else?

Suzy of course the Telegraph's attitude is shocking - the word "fantastic" (should have been "fantastically" but I was overworked that day) in my post is meant to represent "mind-boggling" (as well as, admittedly, a kind of gobsmacked admiration for their consistency and for the burnished contempt of Telegraph prose).

Obviously there are diffs between the elites of sport and art - in fact in the current climate they are almost opposites. Sport is about the application of skills within a strict set of rules. Art - or a strand of it - is about the questioning or removal of rules. I would advance the idea that the well-rounded personality should take joy from both.

Art - or a strand of it - is about the questioning or removal of rules

i would just like to point out that i got shouted at for saying this upthread. if tom doesn't get shouted at i am going to sulk :):)

Yeah Katie but you said that after you'd set up your rule-sets (involving ideas like "skill" and "thought") about what constitutes "art"!

tom, i have been taken to task for the thoughtless things i said after that. this is why the smiley faces! :):):)

My point re. the Telegraph was if they are going to sneer, at least get the facts right.

One of my favourite works of art is The Rules by Angela Bulloch. It has, among other things, 'handkerchief code' for rent boys (eg. yellow hanky = does water sports).

Art comments on all ideas in society, and rules are ideas of a sort. Formalism is all about rules, d'oh. Sport and art are not mutually exclusive or even opposite; see Mark Wallinger's 'A Living Work Of Art' eg. a racehorse bought by the artist and put in races.

Another interesting comment thrown up at Suzy and Nick's Art Summit was that Western people were clamouring for figurative representation in their art and were confused/angered by a lack of same. This would of course be anathema to Muslims and abstract artists.

I went to see it this morning for something to do while I'm in London. I know nowt about art, have never been to a proper gallery before, and I meant to read this thread beforehand but forgot. So I probably (hopefully?) sound ignorant and vapid.

Things that amused me about the Creed thing:

Even though I'd stood at the edge watching it for a bit, when I walked across I still instinctively stopped as soon as the lights went out (daytime + clear skies + glass roof = Not actually very dark either). I saw other people doing this.
You can see it flicking on and off from the other rooms. This is PunXor.
As Nick kind of suggested, everyone came in and said "it's a light going on and off" and walked away without even looking at the thing. You'd think after they'd paid their £3 they would at least try.

So yeah, I was expecting to either be bored it by it and/or come up with some silly pseudo-intellectual justification to pretend I wasn't, but it just made me snigger.

The other stuff (that I didn't look at much):

Films: - A short arty dance film featuring semi-naked [possibly] homosexual models, no one's thought of that before. There was more to it than that, but it just seemed like such a dull starting point that I couldn't be bothered (I liked the split scren bits, rminds me of something, Len "Steal My Sunshine" video?).
- Quite pretty, wished I'd remembered the concept at the time
- Isn't this that God Lives Underwater/Roman Cappola video with the fat kid?
- [Didn't watch it really - Old people, ugggh]

Photos: Wasn't trying to link them or make references like Suzy sed, but thought they were nice anyway, if not that special (I liked the girl on the beach one best actually
Forgot about the forth guy - might have been interesting.

[If I got anything right, it's beginner's luck, promise]

(I'm gibbering, ignore me)

I had a second look at the Mark Wallinger show at the Whitechapel the other day, and it's fantastic, almost all the way through. It's on until January 13th, and if you can get there, do (it's free too! hurrah!).

The experience of the *freezing* installation in the currently in the Wapping Pump House place is well worth the (cost-free) ticket, too, with the added attractions of Prospect of Whitby / Captain Kidd / Town of Ramsgate diversions. Thames-side drinking, num.

Oooh - that reminds me. My mum went to the Wallinger show and said I must too. That's tomorrow's entertainment sorted out. Funny, my mum has never expressed much of an interest in installation art before. Good old mum.

So who are you nominating for next year's?

Now I don't count myself among the ranks of the Turner Prize haters, but can anyone think of a more pointless gesture at inclusivity than this? As if the tine panel is going to se a nomination and go "oh yes, XXX's show of YYY at the ZZZ gallery, hadn't thought of that one, stick it on the list!"

If the TP is good for anything it's good for being the stony face of the unelected art elite.

We should nominate our Princess & The Pea installation plus out "One Of These People Is Alive"series of X-Rays.

And Mark S's going to the Tate Modern to see the Turner Prize last year.

i nominate myself and talitha (see upthread)

Pete, conceptual art is one thing, art which has remained at the concept stage is another entirely.

Still think princess / pea thing is a great idea, though not perhaps quite as great as the urban myths plan.

CONCEPT ART!!!!! Where is the point in carrying it out, the concept is the key thing. And frankly how are we going to talk the Rankin' Miss P into it?

You still haven't managed to talk me into it for god's sake.

haha it is not upthread it is on another thread: more turners for me!!

also bah talitha just phoned to say let's meet for lunch except i was at another desk and didn't get her message till too late = hat trick of turners but the third is tinged with sadness

Emma, no disrespect intended but I think we could ask several people whose qualification as Princess are a match for yours. You would naturally be our first choice but your non-participation would not be the end of the project.

Miss P, on the other hand...

Yes Tim but the fact that I refused a) despite being the art collective's chum and b)when pissed makes me think that you'd have a snowball's chance of getting anyone else to do it.

Oh but for *art*, Emma.