Turner Prize Winner Announced!

[andyandy]

it will be today.....

The hot favourite is Wallinger's "Sleeper" - a bloke wandering round an art gallery in a bear suit....

Listen to the pretentious nonsense as he justifies the artistic merit of his idea and see the masterpiece a man in a bear suit

will people look back upon modern art of this period as the ultimate emperor's new clothes, or do you think that the "art" will survive the test of time?

 

[andyandy]

the world is indeed mad

It was the man in the bear suit who won it: Mark Wallinger, 48, has been awarded this year's Turner prize, 12 years after his first nomination, when he lost out to Damien Hirst. His film Sleeper, 154 minutes of footage of the artist wandering around a deserted German gallery disguised as a bear (but recognisable by his very particular gait), has baffled and entranced visitors to the Turner prize exhibition by turns.

though reading on, curiously, despite being widely quoted as the item being judged, it was apparently for another piece of work

The prize was officially given, in fact, not for Sleeper, but for State Britain, his meticulous re-creation of peace campaigner Brian Haw's anti-war protest in Parliament Square. The work was praised by the judges for its "immediacy, visceral intensity and historic importance" combining "a bold political statement with art's ability to articulate fundamental human truths".
The £25,000 prize was awarded tonight at a ceremony at Tate Liverpool - the first time the prize has been based outside London in its 23-year history - by actor, director and Easy Rider star, Dennis Hopper. Wallinger was the bookies' and art world favourite to win in an uneven contest that saw two fairly senior artists - Wallinger and Mike Nelson, who has also been nominated before, in 2001 - pitched against photographer and film-maker Zarina Bhimji and Glasgow-based sculptor Nathan Coley.

State Britain, on show between January and September 2007 at Tate Britain's Duveen Galleries in London, was by far the most overtly political work in contention for the prize. In it, Wallinger remade Haw's famous peace camp, precise in every detail: from the tea-making area to the numerous banners, flags, photographs and posters amassed by Haw and his supporters. It took 14 people six months to source the materials and carefully weather and age them to a state of complete authenticity in Wallinger's studio in London. It cost him around £90,000 to make, and the commission paid £3,000, so in a curious irony the £25,000 Turner prize money will help him recoup at least a fraction of the cost of making the work, which is currently in storage.

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/turnerprize2007/story/0,,2221321,00.html

so, in summary

man with no art training sits on street by parliament making protest signs - not art

man who trained at Chelsea School of Art and Goldsmiths, who replicates said protest signs - art of the highest merit.

good to get the clear

 

[Matt the Poet]

First off, this is what the Turner Prize is for. Getting all worked up about it is like complaining that shot putters never win marathons. If what you’re into is paintings of things and people there are plenty of prizes for that sort of thing (the Natwest Portrait Prize for one). The Turner Prize is the one that tends to make the news because there’s always someone willing to huff and puff about how it’s not ‘proper’ art.

In any case, a work that took 14 people six months to complete accurately can hardly be said to lack effort or commitment. Re-creations are very definitely an art. What about the still life? Does the fact that the objects in it may not have been arranged by the artist matter?

And art like this does stand the test of time. I went to see Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ at Tate Modern only last week. After all this time it’s still hilarious, still thought-provoking, still reminiscent of a particular time in art history when the whole enterprise got blown wide open.

To be simplistic, looking at it made me think about stuff that I don’t normally think about. Which is the only definition of art I’m happy with. The idea that art has anything to do with weirdly austere protestant notions of ‘workmanship’, ‘craft’ or ‘effort’ has been defunct for nearly a century.

If that makes you unhappy, you can always go and look at some pictures of kittens and flowers and fruit and that. There are zillions of these all over whatever country you live in, and the presence of conceptual art as a movement neither threatens nor invalidates their existence, so why be unhappy about it?

 

[andyandy]

First off, this is what the Turner Prize is for. Getting all worked up about it is like complaining that shot putters never win marathons. If what you’re into is paintings of things and people there are plenty of prizes for that sort of thing (the Natwest Portrait Prize for one). The Turner Prize is the one that tends to make the news because there’s always someone willing to huff and puff about how it’s not ‘proper’ art.

In any case, a work that took 14 people six months to complete accurately can hardly be said to lack effort or commitment. Re-creations are very definitely an art. What about the still life? Does the fact that the objects in it may not have been arranged by the artist matter?

And art like this does stand the test of time. I went to see Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ at Tate Modern only last week. After all this time it’s still hilarious, still thought-provoking, still reminiscent of a particular time in art history when the whole enterprise got blown wide open.

To be simplistic, looking at it made me think about stuff that I don’t normally think about. Which is the only definition of art I’m happy with. The idea that art has anything to do with weirdly austere protestant notions of ‘workmanship’, ‘craft’ or ‘effort’ has been defunct for nearly a century.

If that makes you unhappy, you can always go and look at some pictures of kittens and flowers and fruit and that. There are zillions of these all over whatever country you live in, and the presence of conceptual art as a movement neither threatens nor invalidates their existence, so why be unhappy about it?

well, it appears to have got you far more worked up than me - perhaps you should reflect more on your own sensitivity to even the mildest of criticisms

you don't appear to have addressed the salient point as to what constitutes "art" however - in this case it seems little more than the actions of a man with a qualification from a top art school - how can a reproduction be considered art worthy of merit where the original is not? In this case has art not been reduced to little more than a designer label to signifiy that yes it is art, and yes it is of merit? The question is why award the replicator and not the originator? Had the original creator been to art school, should he have been the winner instead?

 

[Matt the Poet]

well, it appears to have got you far more worked up than me - perhaps you should reflect more on your own sensitivity to even the mildest of criticisms

I’m not sensitive (I’m not a visual artist), but I am quite passionate about the virtues of experimental and conceptual art, and find myself diving into this sort of debate quite a lot just around now.

you don't appear to have addressed the salient point as to what constitutes "art" however - in this case it seems little more than the actions of a man with a qualification from a top art school - how can a reproduction be considered art worthy of merit where the original is not? In this case has art not been reduced to little more than a designer label to signifiy that yes it is art, and yes it is of merit?

When was art anything other than, first and foremost, a commodity? If people are willing to pay for it and put it in galleries then any claim that it isn’t art is essentially meaningless.

Over and above that cold, hard fact, the definition and function of art has changed dramatically in the latter half of the 20th century. This idea of art as some sort of locus of public virtue – a conduit to the masses of the Arnoldian ‘sweetness and light’ of high culture – was a short lived construct, meaningful only in that brief sliver of time after the work of art was available to a good slice of the population, and before the majority of visual stimuli generated by culture became advertising and graphic design.

We cannot, now, define art as ‘well-crafted, edifying images’, or at least not without conceding that Benetton adverts and episodes of The Wire count as art. Since it seems pretty clear that they don’t, art needs to be doing something else now – which it is. It’s not Wallinger, or the Turner judge’s, fault that the previous idea of art lingers.

The question is why award the replicator and not the originator? Had the original creator been to art school, should he have been the winner instead?

The still life analogy is a good one here. The act of a still life artist is not just to paint a big bowl of fruit – if that was the case then you could indeed argue that whoever arranged the stuff in the first place was the artist.

For me, the act of the artist is a mental (indeed, a ‘conceptual’ one). It’s the act of saying ‘this arrangement is important (because of it’s beauty, because it evokes thoughts of transcendence and/or mortality) and that importance is worth capturing’. Everything else is just technique. If done well, it can make you think of something in a different way – which, I’d argue, Wallinger does brilliantly here.

Out in Westminster Square you can feel an vague solidarity or irritation with Hawes as you pass, or ignore him, or whatever. In the gallery, all of the easy, unconsidered things to think and feel about his protest disappear and you’re forced to try and figure out what you’re looking at, what’s important about it, whether it’s anything more than context that make it meaningful and if so, what?

 

[andyandy]

When was art anything other than, first and foremost, a commodity? If people are willing to pay for it and put it in galleries then any claim that it isn’t art is essentially meaningless.

I cartainly agree that art has become commodity - indeed, it is used as an investment vehicle much like one would invest in stocks and shares or bricks and mortar, and yet when one reduces art to commodity the artistic merit itself is redundant - one may as well discuss the artistic merit of a £10 note - well designed though it is, it is sought after for its designated worth not its intrinsic value.

Over and above that cold, hard fact, the definition and function of art has changed dramatically in the latter half of the 20th century. This idea of art as some sort of locus of public virtue – a conduit to the masses of the Arnoldian ‘sweetness and light’ of high culture – was a short lived construct, meaningful only in that brief sliver of time after the work of art was available to a good slice of the population, and before the majority of visual stimuli generated by culture became advertising and graphic design.

We cannot, now, define art as ‘well-crafted, edifying images’, or at least not without conceding that Benetton adverts and episodes of The Wire count as art. Since it seems pretty clear that they don’t, art needs to be doing something else now – which it is. It’s not Wallinger, or the Turner judge’s, fault that the previous idea of art lingers.

But do you not think that once art has been removed from its ‘well-crafted, edifying image' base, there is little left that is remarkable? .....Art as commodity strips it from intrinsic worth, and it is this itself which feeds the "designer" culture - where something is art purely because of the artist - where the name of an artist changes whether that which has been created is considered art. Of course the question itself as to "what is art?" is a subjective one, and i am happy to agree that everyone is entitled to describe art however they wish - but it does seem that the general consensus as to "what is art," is (amongst the modern art world at least) driven by that which does not intrinsically value the art itself....

The still life analogy is a good one here. The act of a still life artist is not just to paint a big bowl of fruit – if that was the case then you could indeed argue that whoever arranged the stuff in the first place was the artist.

For me, the act of the artist is a mental (indeed, a ‘conceptual’ one). It’s the act of saying ‘this arrangement is important (because of it’s beauty, because it evokes thoughts of transcendence and/or mortality) and that importance is worth capturing’. Everything else is just technique. If done well, it can make you think of something in a different way – which, I’d argue, Wallinger does brilliantly here.

Out in Westminster Square you can feel an vague solidarity or irritation with Hawes as you pass, or ignore him, or whatever. In the gallery, all of the easy, unconsidered things to think and feel about his protest disappear and you’re forced to try and figure out what you’re looking at, what’s important about it, whether it’s anything more than context that make it meaningful and if so, what?

ok i quite like this explanation

 

[Matt the Poet]

I cartainly agree that art has become commodity - indeed, it is used as an investment vehicle much like one would invest in stocks and shares or bricks and mortar, and yet when one reduces art to commodity the artistic merit itself is redundant - one may as well discuss the artistic merit of a £10 note - well designed though it is, it is sought after for its designated worth not its intrinsic value.

One may indeed conside the merit of a £10 note - Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty of the K Foundation invited us to consider the merit of 100,000 of the things a few years ago. I don't believe that there was ever a time from the Renaissance on when art was not valued in this way, and I'd argue that this is only a problem if you (ahem) buy into the somewhat romantic notion that commerce inherently devalues the artwork itself.

But do you not think that once art has been removed from its ‘well-crafted, edifying image' base, there is little left that is remarkable?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'remarkable', nor why that is something that art should necessarily be. I went on a tour of the latest installation at my local gallery, where the guide explained that the artist, Trisha Donelly, explicitly wanted the viewer to feel baffled - indeed, even disappointed - by what they were seeing. She felt that this was a far prefereable reaction to the dim sense of bourgeois satisfaction at having 'done art' for an afternoon.

And this is where I'm coming from in my admiration for a lot of Modern art. Unlike most of our predecessors, we live in a world where we are suounded with carefully constructed images and experiences, most of which are designed to make us feel different kinds of pleasure, or, at the very least, satisfaction.

In a world like that, isn't one of the urgent functions of art to remind us that there are other things to feel, different ways to react? Hence the numbed inertia projected by the minimalists, the intimate disgust and anxiety of 'personal' artists like Tracy Emin etc.?

 

[andyandy]

One may indeed conside the merit of a £10 note - Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty of the K Foundation invited us to consider the merit of 100,000 of the things a few years ago. I don't believe that there was ever a time from the Renaissance on when art was not valued in this way, and I'd argue that this is only a problem if you (ahem) buy into the somewhat romantic notion that commerce inherently devalues the artwork itself.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'remarkable', nor why that is something that art should necessarily be. I went on a tour of the latest installation at my local gallery, where the guide explained that the artist, Trisha Donelly, explicitly wanted the viewer to feel baffled - indeed, even disappointed - by what they were seeing. She felt that this was a far prefereable reaction to the dim sense of bourgeois satisfaction at having 'done art' for an afternoon.

And this is where I'm coming from in my admiration for a lot of Modern art. Unlike most of our predecessors, we live in a world where we are suounded with carefully constructed images and experiences, most of which are designed to make us feel different kinds of pleasure, or, at the very least, satisfaction.

In a world like that, isn't one of the urgent functions of art to remind us that there are other things to feel, different ways to react? Hence the numbed inertia projected by the minimalists, the intimate disgust and anxiety of 'personal' artists like Tracy Emin etc.?

true, if one expands the remit of art to "that which provokes a reaction" then we have turned on its head conventional artistic value judgements - if my art is bad, and as such provokes distaste then it's good. If my art is good then it by definition also good. But the problem of such a system is that art is non-falsifiably "good" - and yet is all art "good?" We require that it is not, and so it is here that the cult of celebrity takes hold, the artist and not the art becomes what is important. Were I to scribble on a page, due to my complete lack of artistic talent, i would accept that that would be "bad" art - and yet the same scribble by Emin could enter this non falsifiable loop by justification of artist where it is good purely because of who has drawn it, and not what has been drawn.....
if people genuinly see intrinsic value from modern art, then i have no problem with that, though i find it hard to escape the notion that those artists who've entered that non-falsifiable loop have it rather good

 

[Matt the Poet]

I agree that there’s always going to be intuitive criteria that make art valuable, which is why there’s no ‘non-falsifiable loop’ here that I can see. At the Donelly exhibition I did indeed feel kind of disappointed – it’s sparse, impenetrable stuff that pays very little attention to conventional notions of beauty and symmetry (well, except for one small, narrow chamber full of pine branches and a low, pulsing hum. I could have stayed there all day).

However, I also definitely felt that there was something to be disappointed about. There was meat to what she had done, an understanding of the gallery space and how it might be used, a deft manipulation of our visual sensations of weight and movement. It was a genuine attempt to communicate things that aren’t easily expressible in words. I’ll probably go back and have another go at it.

Similarly, I look at the bear thing, and I think about traditional representations of animals in galleries (painted, stuffed, sculpted.), what we’re looking for in them, the extent to which we need to be in the presence of a ‘living thing’ – but how disappointing it would be if it really was living, so is it an ‘ex-living thing’ we need to look at…there’s a lot to muck about with, if you’re prepared to get beyond the idea that it’s supposed, first and foremost, to be ‘remarkable’.

I’m pretty sure that if Tracy Emin scribbles on paper in a completely meaningless way (which is pretty unlikely – the pencil drawings that often accompany her exhibitions show that she’s an excellent draughtswoman), then people will make their own decisions. They will notice that none of the above seems to apply, that all they are looking at is a scribble, and it’s not taking them anywhere. Nobody will go. Her reputation will be damaged.

None of that’s terrible ‘falsifiable’ in the scientifc sense, but neither is the reaction you have in front of a Titian or a Rubens – so what’s different?

 

[blobru]

it will be today.....

The hot favourite is Wallinger's "Sleeper" - a bloke wandering round an art gallery in a bear suit....

Listen to the pretentious nonsense as he justifies the artistic merit of his idea and see the masterpiece a man in a bear suit

will people look back upon modern art of this period as the ultimate emperor's new clothes, or do you think that the "art" will survive the test of time?

The "emperor's new clothes" -- you mean a nude? Christ, don't give Wallinger any ideas. Next year he might want to recreate Lady Godiva!

"I've awways fe't a connection... ever thince I wass a kid... to naked ladees... on 'orses... huh-huh... I think I'm wanting to say somethin' about 'ow 'orses, are naykid, and laydies too can be naykid, and where do we drawer the lines... between naykid, and 'orses, and lay-dees... uh-huh, huh... like a twee, naykid in a for'st, and nobody sees it's naykid, kind of thing... huh, huh... uh, yeah?"

That youtube link of Wallinger talking about just what it's like to be a man in a bear suit in a museum was illuminating, and hilarious. It definitely deserves some sort of accolade: maybe an Order of the Empire, or Knighthood? Sir Wallinger in a bear suit would add a whole 'nother level to the piece, 54 minutes of an aristocrat in a bear suit in a museum, encased in glass, the encapsulation of the echt habitat of the nobility, the cult of privilege, by the scant gaze of the masses, reducing culture to metric commodity, depravity, caricature, while costumed appetite roams aimlessly a well-lit zoo of static, sterile, stainless, impenetrable angst. Is it art? Is it drama? Comedy? Tragedy? All I know for sure is it could've used some trampolining midgets, stock car crashes, love interest, gripping fight scene, and maybe a duck in a fright wig.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

it will be today.....

The hot favourite is Wallinger's "Sleeper" - a bloke wandering round an art gallery in a bear suit....

Listen to the pretentious nonsense as he justifies the artistic merit of his idea and see the masterpiece a man in a bear suit

will people look back upon modern art of this period as the ultimate emperor's new clothes, or do you think that the "art" will survive the test of time?

Remember that people in the 1870's looked at the Impressionists the same way and asked the same question.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

First off, this is what the Turner Prize is for. Getting all worked up about it is like complaining that shot putters never win marathons. If what you’re into is paintings of things and people there are plenty of prizes for that sort of thing (the Natwest Portrait Prize for one). The Turner Prize is the one that tends to make the news because there’s always someone willing to huff and puff about how it’s not ‘proper’ art.

In any case, a work that took 14 people six months to complete accurately can hardly be said to lack effort or commitment. Re-creations are very definitely an art. What about the still life? Does the fact that the objects in it may not have been arranged by the artist matter?

And art like this does stand the test of time. I went to see Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ at Tate Modern only last week. After all this time it’s still hilarious, still thought-provoking, still reminiscent of a particular time in art history when the whole enterprise got blown wide open.

To be simplistic, looking at it made me think about stuff that I don’t normally think about. Which is the only definition of art I’m happy with. The idea that art has anything to do with weirdly austere protestant notions of ‘workmanship’, ‘craft’ or ‘effort’ has been defunct for nearly a century.

If that makes you unhappy, you can always go and look at some pictures of kittens and flowers and fruit and that. There are zillions of these all over whatever country you live in, and the presence of conceptual art as a movement neither threatens nor invalidates their existence, so why be unhappy about it?

Well said.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

you don't appear to have addressed the salient point as to what constitutes "art" however...

Everything is "art". And nothing is "art".


In other words, the question is unanswerable.