What is the Turner Prize for?
Posted by Steve Hare
Steve Hare is an author, writer, editor and collector.
22 October 2008
'Detestable absurdities'; 'a gross outrage to nature'; the contents of a spittoon'…
The annual Turner Prize at times seemed to exist solely as fuel for the more rabid scribes of the redtop press. The sort of people who wish there was an actual Turner prize, rather than just a sponsor's cheque; a proper Turner painting they could wave in front of the winner and froth, 'No mate, this is art.'
Before I go any further, it is only fair to mention that the criticisms above were all, of course, directed at the work of JMW Turner himself, and not the shortlisted artists of the last 25 years.
In a recent Guardian interview, Jake Chapman confessed that his 'most embarrassing moment' had been 'losing the Turner Prize to a grown man dressed as a schoolgirl'. These days – after that quarter of a century of controversy, memorable and occasionally forgettable contenders, the Turner Prize seldom shocks, but it almost always surprises. But it doggedly remains the natural outlet for the green ink brigade throughout middle England with some spleen to vent about what the world is coming to, and what's wrong with a nice landscape?
The offspring, meanwhile, of 'disgusted of Tunbridge Wells', have acquired the habit of spending most of a Saturday evening having the '100 best films/ads/TV programmes/books/records… ever' dissected by anonymous celebrities. These shows demonstrate at best a rapidly decreasing attention span, as they dissect, for the most part, the very recent past. The benefit of hindsight is just 'so yesterday'…
But while every year's Turner Prize is interesting, and keeps the debate about what, exactly, constitutes 'art' alive and kicking, they only really become properly so after a decade or two. With the benefit of that invaluable hindsight – but, much more importantly the continuing output of the artists in contention – you get to see how wrong or right the judges got it, both with the shortlists and the overall winners, and how far and fast art is always moving.
Last year's Retrospective confirmed that it was almost right for much of the time. At close range the Prize might well look eccentric, and people might well say 'Goshka who?'; but give it time and you will see an interesting perspective – and often anticipation – on the people who count and matter. (But you do have to allow for a certain movement of the goalposts in this; the condition about artists nominated being under 50 was an afterthought – and somewhat retrospectively helped explain the absence of David Hockney, Lucian Freud, Anthony Caro, Eduardo Paolozzi, Patrick Caulfield … I could go on… amongst the winners and even sometimes the shortlists).
I have no statistics to prove this, but the Prize seems to aim a little younger every year – deliberately seeking out and celebrating if not quite the next best thing, or at least the coming trend. It is decidedly not along the lines of the Oscars and BAFTA, where moribund icons are routinely wheeled out towards the end of the evening for a 'special award'.
And so it should be. Could you ever justify shortlisting Damien Hirst today, for whom the Prize would be small change, and the attendant publicity a pale candle against the grotesque glare of a diamond-encrusted disco ball, and a mere whisper alongside the telephonic feeding frenzy of anonymous Russians? (And yet Hirst , in his own inimitable way, continues to question, probe and exploit the meaning of art).
The Turner Prize tracks and celebrates changes and developments: the experiments of those at the extreme edges of what we regard as 'art'. What you see exhibited each year might ultimately represent a blind alley, an unforced error or a final step before a new direction. But it might come to be seen in time as a turning point, a revelation, a new beginning. It is, in its essence, a celebration of the future rather than the past.
It's at its best when it ignores what everyone else is saying. In its early days you can sense the uncertainty in its own meaning and purpose by its own overreaction to media overreaction. An all-male shortlist would be countered with an all-female one the following year; early shortlists even pitted occasional curators against practitioners – vaguely analogous, I suppose, to playing Fabio Cappello in goal for England – and some way beyond pitting potters against photographers and painters.
The Turner Prize is condemned to live on in popular memory in terms of unmade beds, elephant dung, bisected cows, flickering lights and floating sheds. Does that matter? Not a bit. Does art itself matter? Quite a lot. And the Prize exists to remind us of that fact, and keep us exercised and engaged around the water coolers, bars – and in the galleries. Long may it shock and surprise.
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