The Turner Prize

sounds like SHAME for the name of Turner imo. =(

My feelings too

Just out of curiosity - have you visited the show and seen the work ? I just had a long Email from someone on alt.philosophy.debate about the Sensation show - he said he wanted to be shocked by the show and was disappointed ...... blah, blah, blah ....... and then he suddenly revealed that he had seen the work - all of it apparently, via the Internet. I won't bother responding to him.

As humans we make all sorts of judgements based on unsubstantiated evidence and pass it onto the world for others to make more judgements. As artists we have an obligation to remain open minded and to *look* and *think* about what we are seeing before passing on that information.

Turner would most likely have loved this award - why would you say he wouldn't ? It is awarded to encourage the career of the British artists who has contributed most to British art during the last twelve months. In his own time Turner suffered a great deal of criticism for his work - he was, after all, the first true abstract painter - and the most avant garde artist of the nineteenth century - he deplored the structure of the academy and detested the bourgeoisie. He was also brash and confident and all the things that the young British artists are today.

Alison

I love it! There's an article in Brill's Content this month, with a conservative whining again about that shit (in more ways than one). He says that conservatives, rightly, keep pointing out that liberals would be throwing a fit if this were trowled all over black heroes instead of the Virgin Mary. Since I believe that artists can like whoever they want, including Martin Luther King over the Catholic church, I can forgive his stupidity in not getting that Mary is obvious one of the painter's heroes, or at least stopping to think that art is in part about examining one's need for heroes. At some level, it doesn't matter, since the art should get its say anyhow. I could almost forgive his not noticing that the shit isn't shoveled on loosely, had that been a slip in writing about what he'd seen, since the meaning doesn't hinge on the clumping. But it's just unforgiveable that, first, the latter mistake stems from his not having seen the work and, second, that the other paintings ARE about black heroes.

BTW, it's been pointed out that Giuliani was staging a media event to attract publicity and get the support of the Right. He'd known of the show's content for a year, and at that press conference he actually fed the question to a journalist, who obediently asked it. One journalist, Lewis Lapham in Harper's, says that shows he isn't really a fascist, just an opportunist, but judging by his uncompromising policies, there's no reason he couldn't be both.

Oh, s***, I just went off on my own long rants. That too is a kind of refusal to deal with art. This thread is about a truly excellent report on the Turner Prize.

J John Haber

If something looks like crap on the net its pretty likley to look like crap in the round.

Mani DeLi ...no skill no art

Check out my web page, A Skeptical View of Modern Art and my book, comments, work at:. http://www.interlog.com/~hugod/

If she is a sincere artist then she will be dead soon - that was her pledge if she didn't win the Turner Prize.

Alison

I recently returned from the Carnegie International (Pittsburgh, PA. U.S.A.) and I found the submission by the Wilson sisters to be simply astounding. Absolutely brilliant. Similar to previous Wilson pieces that I have seen in New York, the Carnegie video installation addressed our contemporary notion of the 'institution' - a sort of Orwellian view of the Post-Cold War era. Although they did not receive the Carnegie Prize (like that makes a difference), it was one of my most memorable experiences of the exhibition.

Regardless of who or who does not win an award, I feel a certain sense of comfort knowing that artists, like Jane and Louise Wilson, continue to surprise and challenge ...

Richard

BTW, amazing how little coverage it's getting here. Did it even make the NY Times yet? I keep looking. John Haber

I gave up following the Turner Prize last year. But I will win it by getting people to give me their old underwear they don't need, putting it in a cardboard box and selling it to some rich bastard just for the sole purpose of getting the Sun to print the headline 'Man pays money for load of old pants!'

Anyway, I'm off to make lampshades before they give me another injection.

-james