― Mark C, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
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.
― Pete, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
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.
― Tom, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
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.
― katie, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
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.
― Tim, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
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.
― mark s, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
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!
― Sarah, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
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.
― suzy, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
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.
― james, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Jeff W, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― dave q, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
who cares who wins the grammy or whatever?
― Paul barclay, Monday, 10 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
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.
― Pete, Tuesday, 11 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Tom, Tuesday, 11 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― Douglas, Tuesday, 11 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― suzy, Tuesday, 11 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― michael, Tuesday, 11 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
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***
― Mark C, Tuesday, 11 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
Possibly I should put a little red paper spot by the holes and boast about how much I sold the MCs for...
― mark s, Tuesday, 11 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― katie, Tuesday, 11 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
"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."
― Tom, Thursday, 13 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
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, Monday, 17 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
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.
― Tom, Monday, 17 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
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 :):)
― katie, Monday, 17 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
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 actuallyForgot about the forth guy - might have been interesting.
[If I got anything right, it's beginner's luck, promise]
― Graham, Monday, 31 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
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.
― Tim, Thursday, 3 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
― N., Friday, 4 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
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.
― Tim, Thursday, 18 April 2002 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link