Turner Prize

Former Member

For our American cousins, theTurner Prize is the highest accolade for art, competed for on a annual basis.

This years Turner Prize entrants have been announced and are now on display in the Tate. Naturally these exhibits have recieved widespread media coverage, with the usual furore about taste and questions about whether this really is "art".

So, in walks former art student and current Govt Minister Kim Howells. In the comments book he has described the exhibitions as "cold, conceptual bullshit". Do you think this is a realistic description of modern art?

And are his comments "art" in themselves?

Former Member

It's a fucking joke.

Last year's winner entry: a light that goes on and off in an empty room.

Former Member

did you go the exhibition last year, aladdin?
if not, and I bet you didn't if you think it's such a fucking joke, perhaps you should reserve your judgement.
i wasn't a particularly big fan of the winner - art which is about art, whichis effectively what that was, loses sight of its principle aim: to illuminate our lives - but some of the other stuff was really interesting.
Funny how people who wouldn't judge a film or a book or traditional painting without actually seeing it are very quick to ridicule this branch of art. I'm not saying all of it's good, not by a long way - but I would say you should actually experience it before you say it's shit.

Former Member

Art: any works produced by creative skill

Art is about looking at things from a different perspective, its all around us, we just have to open our minds.

Former Member

Originally posted by Prufrock
Funny how people who wouldn't judge a film or a book or traditional painting without actually seeing it are very quick to ridicule this branch of art. I'm not saying all of it's good, not by a long way - but I would say you should actually experience it before you say it's shit.

I disagree, there are many books which I wouldn't read and many films I won't see because I know instinctively that I would think they are shit.

Likewise, I don't need to see a light automatically switching on/off, or a billboard describing a porn movie, or an unmade bed, or half a cow, etc etc etc to know that I wouldn't believe that they are art.

As for the assertion that "Art: any works produced by creative skill", this really leave massive scope. Is my dinner art, or just the way I present it on a plate. Is the perfect defence splitting pass art, or just a sign of a sportsman. Where do you draw the line?

Former Member

I get the feeling that far too many people are buying the concept that if someone comes up with an idea nobody had previously thought of, it is art. Tracy Emin famously displayed her unmade bed, complete with soiled sheets and used condoms, as an art exhibit. If memory serves she didn't win a prize for it but she still got a lot of publicity, good reviews and recently someone bought this piece of 'art' for £100,000. IMHO such thing cannot be regarded as art by any conventional or rational means. However we're all part of Cool Britannia now, and if they tell us that slicing cows in half is a masterpiece of art, then it must be true. Presumably if I were to chop my right hand on live television, bury it in cement and exhibit in a glass case it would be a piece of art, provided that nobody else had thought of it first.

I'm sorry if I sound too cynic. I acknowledge that new ways of thinking in painting, sculpture, visual imagery, etc might be very ingenious indeed and can be regarded as art. But when the top prize of a prestigious art competition is awarded to a 'lights go on-lights go off' concept, I can't help it but think the judges of the Turner live in a world of their own and have a very weird concept indeed of what constitutes art.

Former Member

This is the trouble, a few shitty pieces of "cold, conceptual, bullshit" are designed, and everyone calls it art, thereby making the whole art world look like morons.

Some of the best artists in the world, ever, were slagged off endlessly for doing new things. Monet, Picasso, Kandinsky, Munch and Dali would never have been successful had the traditionalist art movement of their time had their way. Stuff like Emin's bed is just utter bollocks, but a lot of modern sculpture and painting is incredibly good. Have a walk around the Tate Modern, the Modern Art museum off Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow, or the Baltic Centre in Gateshead and tell me that its full of shit. Because it certainly isnt.