Man Wins Turner Prize For Dressing As Bear
It's Turner Prize time again.
And – while there's nothing worse than people who label anything slightly intellectual or artistic as 'pretentious' - we can't help but side with the naysayers on this one and shake our heads like that bewildered Grandma watching 2 Girls 1 Cup on YouTube.
Held in new 'city of culture' Liverpool – kind of like renaming Dachau 'smilesville' – Monday night's Turner Prize was the 23rd in a long line of such controversial get-togethers. Named after the painter J.M.V Turner – an arguable pioneer of the Impressionist aesthetic – the gong generally seems to be given to whatever a local panel of sixth-formers would think would offend their parents the most.
This year? It's been won by a man dressing as a bear.
Artist Mark Wallinger submitted a video work which consisted of him putting on the grizzly outfit and wandering around Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie for 10 nights in a row. The judges justified their decision by hailing the piece as genius, stating that:
"In this meditative yet disquieting work, notions of national memory and allegory converge to continue Wallinger's examination of the themes of identity and representation."
Yes. Quite. On the same subject, the panel really should go out and pick up a copy of Trigger Happy TV on DVD – Dom Joly's scintillating critique of the dichotomy between urban architecture and the underlying yet unseen presence of the natural world. Or a man putting on a giant bunny outfit. However you want to see it.
Christ – just don't let them ever see Rentaghost. They'd probably think Da Vinci had returned or something.
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Quite agree, CJ Davies. All future arts awards should only be made to Realism style oil paintings of bowls of fruit. And yes, the presentation must be made at a black-tie dinner in the banqueting hall of a prestige hotel in the centre of London. Many of us shout “hurrah” and join you in your plea for a return to sense and conservative values.
Read the second line of the article, Steve
[...] It’s because I’ve been too busy running desperately around my kitchen in a chicken costume protesting about the perils of factory farming in an attempt to win £25,000 cash. [...]
Most people who criticise art works never make the effort to go and see them, they seem to have no interest in contemporary art, they just like being outraged at things… It’s always the same with the turner prize, the judges take pleasure in picking controversial winners in order to grab headlines and perpetuate their publicity.
The real problem is that people seem to think that getting outraged by the turner prize once a year constitutes forming an opinion on the state of contemporary art.
I dunno, I spend quite a lot of time looking at contemporary art. I spend quite a lot of time saying ‘That’s fucking shite’ as well, but I have my reasons. Maybe I’m just more of a Stag At Bay man at heart, eh?
The reporter should get their facts right. Mark won for his piece State Britain, 2007 not this much earlier work.
[...] the right artist win? Adrian Searle thinks so in The Guardian, others (Bloggers, the Tabloid Press) might have different opinions, but though the prize is judged on the basis of [...]