Turner Prize

I WILL go and see the turner prize this week.

And maybe you'll check out Owada CDs now if you can find them.

However, the whole thing is more than justified because you can revel in looking at the dozens and dozens of fashion/art scum lapping it up and know in the deepest part of yourself that they have NO SOUL and are the shallowest, most pitiful, pointess motherBLEEPers in history. Hehehe.

No it isn't. No no no. Pissing off "the public" is a bloody STUPID goal! What does it achieve? Is it punXoR? Blind, directionless irritation is exactly that, so you've made a few people in Affluent Commuter Villages go "tccch". Yeah, fabulous, amazing. I could make them go "tcch" by running up behind them and tapping on the back but what would be the POINT? Surely "they think modern art is shite" and this gets reinforced by some boring old twat who of course is ONLY JOKING because he's so much cleverer than the public? It's lazy and to the people who have some reasonable modicum of intelligence and HAF actually seen some Modern Arse which they LIKE is just boring boring boring BORING nyeaaaahaahhhhahahahaha. I don't like the way that this contempt for the "general public" is manifesting itself either. Are you saying, DG, that the general public don't deserve to see "proper" modern art?

here i think is his best work , in that it transforms space , makes you reconsider the mechanics of common and banal objects thru sheer gall.

However that's not to say Creed isn't good. With the lights thing - with lots of his things - he seems to be trying to get as near as possible to not making art. And yes it does make you - or make *us* - ask questions about skill and conceptuality and piss-taking. For instance, "How much skill do you need to make art good?". If the answer is "The more skill the better" then is a forger of a Rembrandt (technically v.difficult) better than Rembrandt? If the answer is "just enough skill" then define enough. And on the other side, very few of the 'it's the concept not the skill, stupid' people have much of a critical grip on what makes a good concept or why a concept has to be had by an Artist before it becomes Art.

The funniest thing on the Turner show was somebody saying that the reason Creed was good was that he "gets up peoples noses". But the person saying that sounded very self-satisfied, so Creed presumably hadn't got up his nose at all (something else might have) - does that mean that Creed is ONLY good as art for people like Sarah C and Mark C who do get annoyed by it, and people like Suzy and I should be disappointed for liking it. But on the other hand it did annoy me a bit with the brazen-ness of it - it put me in touch with my inner philistine for a few seconds, so that was great.

I too get the vague idea that Creed won because it would stimulate the most discussion, and the most annoyed column inches which is what the Turner Prize is pretty much all about. I too like the piece that Antony linked too and think that if it had been in the Tate - he probably wouldn't have won.

Mike Nelson made SUCH a splash in Venice (The Deliverance and the Patience, named after two merchant ships) but the show here at the ICA was disappointing after such a cohesive display. That's why he didn't win.

I'm actually disappointed that Isaac Julien didn't get more comprehension here. He has done a video piece where a black man is wandering Sir John Soane's Museum, which is a jewel box completely subsidised by oppressive colonial exploitation. And in the case of the wandering man, becomes a Pandora's box. There are often diptych screen splits and triptych splits so you can be literalist about that (duality, the fracture of the relationship between the colonised and the booty taken in that process - also with Isaac you're talking about homo booty, so add THAT layer). And his cowboys in the desert are total Tom of Finland, with punk/Westwood refs at no extra charge.

Richard Billingham's work is good, but he is being very lazy making it as most of what's on offer hasn't changed since 1997. That is the year he should have won the Prize.

Also, I'm just a little bit irritated by the people's resentment at having to interpret art for themselves. It's not difficult and you'd resent spoon-feeding anyway, so WTF?

To my mind, this is a more interesting lights on - lights off project. But I will go to the Tate to check it out in person.

Where did someone say this? Also, I remember previously you telling us the background to the Turners (and talking in this post about a lot of background info your average scrote won't know) and saying that knowing all this is certainly part of the interpretation of art. Therefore interpreting art is something you DON'T do yourself if you're going on someones information? I certainly don't have a problem interpreting art for myself, it's when I find that the artist stamps "oh it's actually about the falklands" all over it that I have more issues DAMN YOU NICK HEYWARD!

As for the cowboys, "pure Tom of Finland" they were not - the lean fashionista looks of the actors would have been anathema to muscle- freak ToF!

I think I said this a year ago, but as we know, things get truer with repetition: using the Turner as a guide to contemporary art is like using the Mercury Music prize as your primer for modern music.

That said there really is a terrible flaw in the presentation of the video pieces at the Turner exhibition which didn't give them a fair stab.

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

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.

who cares who wins the grammy or whatever?

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).

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.

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?'.

***I am only being facetious***

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

"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."

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?

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.

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 :):)

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.

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]

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.

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.

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

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

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

Miss P, on the other hand...

<3

"Turner Prize nominees form a collective so they all win"

https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/turner-prize-winner-2019-art-041219

the prize is only £25,000?

25k for the winner, 5k for other 3. so they split the 40k total 4 equal ways.