Britain’s Tate Gallery has become notorious for handing out
thousands of pounds for outlandish (some would say outrageous) works of
art. In 2002 The Tate Modern paid
£22,300 of public money for a 30 gram can of shit.
The canned feces was that of the artist Piero Manzoni (now
deceased). Is it the case that a relic
of the artist is a work of art? A
spokesperson for the Tate described the canned excrement as a seminal work but
a denouement would be more
descriptive.
The most controversial of the Tate’s innovations, however, is
the Turner Prize offered by the Tate Modern nearly every year (no prize was
awarded in 1990) since 1984. The first
winner was Malcolm Morley for a work titled Farewell
Crete and earned the
artist £10,000
As Morley’s work was recognizably within the traditional
boundaries of the visual arts only its worth could be questioned but it wasn’t
long before an astonished public began to raise its collective voice in
response to the Tate’s more sensational prize winners.
Damien Hirst started his artistic career as one of many modern
artists experimenting with color and the place of language in the artistic
process. In 1995 Hirst won the Turner
Prize with his literal piece titled Mother
and Child Divided.
Hirst used an actual cow and calf and had them deftly cut in
half down the middle. He then mounted
them in glass cases filled with formaldehyde creating a walk through
exhibition. The critics were dismayed
but Hirst was on his way to becoming a multi-millionaire. He had hit upon a formaldehyde formula that
made him both notorious and rich.
If his work had been displayed at a country show in the dairy
section there’s a good chance that it would have been welcomed as a novel
educational promotion of dairy farming. As winner of the Turner Prize it became
christened as art much to the disgust of many art connoisseurs. Few, however, would be prepared to put forth
an argument showing why it could not be art.
In
1998 Chris Ofili won the coveted prize with a work depicting an African Virgin Mary. The work was plastered with elephant dung.
The
work is not unattractive and bodily fluids and animal excrement has a long
history of use as an artistic medium in underdeveloped countries. Nevertheless the church going public was
outraged.
It
seems that discrediting the Turner Prize winner has become a public pastime for
Britons who wait expectantly each year for the much publicized
announcement. As for the artists they
know that the more their work is maligned the more notorious they become and
the more they can ask for their work.
In
2001 Martin Creed combined simplicity with gall and took out the Turner with a
work called Lights Going On and Off.
Creed
set up shop in a bare room at the Tate, purchased a timer and attached it to
the light switch setting it for five seconds on and five seconds off. What followed was instant success.
The
only down side to winning the Turner, it seems, is when your work is accepted
by the middle of the road art going public. In such cases the artist must come
up with a novel promotion gimmick
In
2003 potter Grayson Perry won the Turner Prize now worth £20,000 for his
attractive pots.
To
ensure his work was publicized Perry publicly outed himself as a transvestite turning
up with his wife and children to accept his prize dressed in a Shirley Temple
outfit.
To
many the Turner Prize, claimed by a gallery spokesperson as the cutting edge of
British art, is often little more than pretentious twaddle. Enraged traditionalists
insist the Turner is a travesty of modern art.
Nevertheless these same traditionalists are among the 120,000 who turn
up every year to view the works of short listed artists and to tisk tisk the
entries they dislike.
One
artist who received notoriety in 1999, though not a winner, was Tracy Emin who
submitted her unmade bed as an example of art.
In
keeping with the Tate’s penchant for superciliously choosing questionable art
works the 2007 winner is a film of a man in a bear costume. Mark Wallinger spent
10 hours in a Berlin gallery wandering around in a bear suit and received
£25,000 for a 154 minute film of the episode.
I suppose a hundred years from now £25,000 will seem
small beer as prize money but I wonder how Wallinger’s work of art will be received
by art connoisseurs of the future? Will
it be recognized as the Duchamp’s Fountain of 2007 or will advanced technology
consign it to the dust bin as a curious artifice of a bygone era?
Launt Thompson
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