Turner Prize

Also, Soane of course made his money from architecture, i.e. Immortal High Art (you're the board's staunchest defender of proper payments for artists aren't you Suzy?). If Julien wants us to conflicted about beautiful things coming from badness then there are *tons* of much better places, aren't there?

And you're STILL talking about "the general public" in snobbish terms. Fair enough, they don't know about the Soanes (?) or read any art books - oh hey, hang on, does this mean I am general public as well and should just go and look at a pretty print of some sunflowers in a vase? I believe the Turner could have a lot more potential but as it is it's a dull injoke which generates a lot of smug backpatting which doesn't actually get any good modern art out there at all. Of course I'm talking out of my arse there as this was the first time I heard of Rachel Whiteread'n'that. The Creed thing though was in no way fantastic. Just mediocre, which in turn depresses and angers me, from whence cometh my reaction. And people who say it's great cos they can argue with the "thickies" who don't like, get it, are surely missing some kind of point and using art as a Me Better Than You tool.

EVERYTHING on this board = ART, separately and collectively.

Also so is this: ":P to m.creed and :P to his detractors"

Skill is a TRAP. Theory is a TRAP. Prizes are TRAPS. PunXoR is a TRAP. Ditto freedom, history, the West, the ppl, blair and ART ART ART ART ART ART ART.

The problem seems to be that if Creed's piece is meant to make us think about art it's doing a very bad job of it - as someone said upthread it's making people on both sides reheat fairly typical prejudices. Dull mediocrity encouraging mediocre thinking perhaps? This tempers my earlier happiness a bit - is Creed's installation too near non-art for more exciting conversations about it to happen?

Isabel by the way thought Creed's was easily the best on entirely aesthetic grounds - the regular dimming-to-off and then flooding of the lights have her the nearest of all four to the kind of gut- reaction talked about upthread.

Sure his documentary work shows a film-maker capable of stringing together a vague coherent argument, but his video/film pieces pretty much since YSR are - from a cinematic point of view - rather uninspiring (those I have seen). Perhaps it is only in the field of art that some of the more obvious things he is trying to explore are actually interesting and radical. All too often it is much more informed by Julien the person, for which we can read his sexuality and ethnicity. Once this is known it is very easy to read both surface and depth into his pieces - which would not be there without this knowledge. Being taken seriously by collectors - as you well know - means absolutely nothing.

I'd certainly love to sit down and talk to him about films, but then I could bore the hind leg off a donkey on that subject.

I also think that Sarah's position on this is more than defendable, and for all the excellent presentation of Matthew Collinge, the program did little to dispell this.

It seems to play heavy on your mind that someone, somewhere might condesend to you as a member of the general public. Or it's the anxiety that the people making decisions, awarding prizes, setting cultural agendas might not actually give a shit about the people they're representing or educating or setting up culture intended for everyone to enjoy or to serve as a conversation point. I know people in these positions can be jaded or have entitlement issues, but the vast majority do want something nice to happen as a result of their work. ESPECIALLY artists.

I said upthread that Martin Creed's art is all about equations; it is. There's probably a damned good reason that the light stays off for, say, 4.3 seconds instead of 10. Nobody told me that: I worked it out for myself based on my own reaction to the work I've seen. Bottom-line I don't really care about the predictable traditionalist mouth-frothing at Turner time, it's more expected than most people's rubbish arguments about modern art. Anyway, conceptual artists are not always about the hard-sell, the best ones - like Creed - say very little about the work; you have to take clues from it and interpret it based on what you know. And when I don't know something, instead of grumbling that someone's trying to make an arse of me because I'm just a stupid punter, I make an effort to learn to fill in my gaps. Or you have to accept that jokes are okay in art if it's to be a real mirror for life, and just laugh.

people who get paid for jokes are called comedians, not artists.

Now come on Suzy, this is nonsense. You may well be right that there is a reason 4.3 seconds is used - but it doesn't take a genius to think that there may be a reason behind anything being done in such a deliberate manner. There may be a reason why he did not black out the skylight, there may be a reason why the light flickers on rather than being discrete. But - and this is equally important - there may not. And frankly the four or five sentences put above are about as interesting as the discussion around the Creed piece gets.

Sarah also appreciates there may be a reason - its just it literally does not interest her (sorry Sarah for word mouth implanting). Which is her perogative, when to be fair those books, music, films and TV which you reference are both accessible and more interesting.

Hey! It's No.9 in an occasional series of 'top passive-aggressive statements'

Having thought for myself I pronounce blu-tack on wall = shit, light being turned on and off = shit. It doesn't reach me. I also don't believe that a requirement to research the motivation behind a piece of art = justification for the art per se. If they need to prove themselves through means other than the artwork, then it could be seen, at best, as a visual piece of commentary on the subject, but not art.

I wouldn't for a moment criticise any of you who like these pieces because they emotionally effect you in some way. Only you know whether this is the case or you're faking it, so no criticism would be necessary anyway.

suzy: tell us a BAD piece of art that's been in the turner recently (or is good/bad a trap too?)

originality is a trap: i forgot that one

sarah's and tim's reactions/styles-of-reception to art are the opposites of their attitudes to music: discuss

if I insulted you about the Pixies, I'm sorry: I only recall telling you how and why I thought they were rubbish. That's surely a different thing from your saying the *only* reason contemporary art exists is as a function of scenesterism and snobbery: that necessarily implies that anyone who does happen to enjoy contemporary art is in it for those reasons (champagne, opportunity to patronise others). I really don't think I trail around little galleries in London for that reason, and I also don't go to openings, precisely to avoid what you're talking about.

Scenesterism exists for sure, but is easily avoided. There is a whole lot more to contemporary art than that. Honestly.

I wonder if Suzy timed the Creed pieces lights coming on and off, or if she read that it was a period of 4.3 seconds.

The horse-race thing was a joke mostly and a comment on the prize (which is a pretty bad way to showcase contemporary art, no question). Also, rather crucially, he got it completely wrong.

There is a whole lot more to contemporary art than that. Honestly.

this is so true, which is why the ligging and the backslapping (both of which you have pointed out you do not indulge in!) is so annoying. once again i expressed my opinion badly and was making generalisations (always a bad idea on this board!) it's the whole "let's gang up on people who didn't think it was sooo witty when Madonna said motherfuckers" mentality that is annoying me, coupled with Suzy's assumption that this means i am insecure. i do like a lot of contemporary art, and i should see more, broaden my horizons and that. it's this Turner Prize thing that has really gotten my goat. it's the crumpled up paper and the blu-tack, and the posing. people like you and anthony who just love it and will defend it i really really have no wish to shout at, please believe me.

Mark C: I kind of agree with you in principle, but eagerly await examples of people who've written about loving a piece of art, but have only done so to be cool. I'm not saying that doesn't happen, it's just that, without examples, your righteous scorn appears to be directed towards persons of straw. And why no such scorn for people who write about music which doesn't connect with you?

I'm off to the ICA tonight... to watch some indie pop. Heh.

i like it (er "it": as haven't actually SEEN the creed piece) because it DOESN'T pretend to be deep. I am a Gemini. Deep = evil.

VdR won the Turner Prize at my party by finding a way to adjust my kitchen light so ppl don't bonk their head on it. I won it for spilling oily food all down my T-shirt as per usual and having to go and change into another one. Gareth won for putting cigarette and liquid in a plastic cup in the WRONG ORDER: heat melts plastic, liquid meant to dowse heat runs out of hole and through gaps in flooboard into my downstairs neighbour's ceiling.

WOAH NELLY (tm EMI or someone I should expect), where does this insecurity thing come from? Me having opinions which find problems with how I find art is treated and talked about != me feeling condescended to by the CONCEPT of "art". However I don't like feeling "forced" to check out [xxx] 'background research'. Neither do I like the same thing in music, for example, "she likes B&S therefore she should like Smiths ect accepted canon". It also seems then like the artists aren't saying anything themselves which isn't a reference…

And when I don't know something, instead of grumbling that someone's trying to make an arse of me because I'm just a stupid punter, I make an effort to learn to fill in my gaps.

Now that's uncalled for. I never described, or thought of myself in those terms. But it's good to know what you think, isn't it? Or hang on, am I being 'insecure'? And that wasn't the point I was getting at in the first place. Certainly you've said before that without the background you don't understand it as well. Fair enough, but I don't LIKE having to know a miriad of background information, taking "art" into the purely cereberal realm of The Knowledge which shuns that "gut reaction" talked about upthread.

Rest of what I have to say is expressed by people who got there before I did - sorry, I have dull filing and regular work to do as well! And of course Top Secret Work ahem. The winner of MY Turner Prize today is the horse that lives on the first floor of the building opposite to my office. He's grrr8!

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)

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.

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.

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.