The Stuckists Badge
Artinfo reports that the Stuckists showed up at the Tate denouncing the Turner Prize. I don't know much about the Stuckists except that their L.A. contingent's Website sends a lot of traffic to my post on John Currin. Looking them up again I find the original Stuckist manifesto and I find, much to my surprise, that I agree with them. "Artists who don’t paint aren’t artists"? Hell yeah! "Art that has to be in a gallery to be art isn’t art"? Testify!
And anyone who gets yelled at by Tracey Emin is my favorite person in the whole world. Because, really, she's terrible. So Billy Childish, I love you.
We should all join with the Stuckists in denouncing the Turner Prize. What junk. This makes me long for my old days of cranking out propaganda on the photocopier. Maybe I should stage something outside the New Museum.
The Turner Prize, apart from being utterly unworthy of its namesake, is not dead. It is merely a manifestation of disease, and as long as being ill remains sufficiently fashionable, not to mention profitable, the TP will carry on very nicely.
It seems that this prize just enforces what I call the academic elitism of contemporary art world
It'd be okay if it was a real elitism. Elitism is fine if the elite really is elite. For example, I'll never be a theoretical physicist. I cannot discuss theoretical physics in any meaningful way. As far as the top theoretical physicists go, they're an elite group. But it doesn't bother me that they are, because they actually can do something I can't. Likewise the Yankee pitching staff. They deserve their elite status, and can be as elitist as they want as far as I'm concerned.
The Turner Prize nominees, and those who nominate them, are an elite for no reason I can ascertain. The whole phenomenon mystifies me.
well I can imagine that when it was created some twenty five years ago? it was set up to promote the then poorly recognized British contemporary art scene- which in the subsequent years has help to establish many of the leading or at least most recognized artist in the world while at the same time securing the British are Wrold at the head of the table.
Chris, you will never understand something like the Turner Prize if you presume it is about rewarding actual artistic merit. That's beside the point, regardless of the inevitable lip service, which nobody genuinely believes anyway (except the terminally deluded). It's sort of like the Mae West movie character's response to an elderly lady's compliment at a party:
Old Lady: "Goodness, what beautiful diamonds!"
Mae West: "Thanks, honey, but goodness had nothing to do with it."
Never mind artistic merit. What exactly does it reward? That's what I can't figure out. I mean, how does one end up a) giving out a prize like the Turner or b) receiving one? I honestly can't figure out the process, except to reduce it to, well, this guy knows this guy, and he owns some work by this other guy, and Bob's your uncle. Which lacks explanatory power.
Chris, it doesn't matter. It's not about logic in the first place, and the people involved obviously don't give a shit what outsiders think of it. This is essentially a game for inside players, and they actually think it's cool that people like you think they're full of it, even though they are.
I highly recommend
The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art (2008)
by Don Thompson
Jack, I agree with you in many ways, and I love having you around here and Franklin's, but I do have to say, you keep coming back to two rhetorical points, which in brief are, "You're surprised it works this way? But it doesn't matter."
I'm not so much surprised it works the way it does as I am curious as to how it continues. You have to imagine that I'm the kind of person who, upon finding a cockroach in his kitchen, picks up the critter and examines it carefully. I want to know how the darn thing works, how it's put together, why it does what it does. My daughter's always yelling at me to come kill a spider or something and I drive her nuts by insisting on observing it and, if possible, carefully catching it to release it outside.
So think of me that way, perhaps as an anthropologist. I want to know how it is that humans have put together a system whereby the Turner Prize exists and is given to someone like Mark Leckey.
And I think it does matter. I'm a romantic that way. I think the stupidity of other people does matter.
"I think the stupidity of other people does matter."
Only to you, Chris, not to them, and there's the rub.
I've requested the book from my library.
Oh, and Chris, when your daughter asks you to kill some lousy bug, just off the damn thing and be done with it. I mean, don't give the poor girl a hard time. She's liable to think all men are, well, weird.
I'm more the kind of father who points out that spiders are not, in fact, bugs. And that daddy longlegs aren't spiders, and are more properly called harvestmen.
She already thinks I'm weird.
Perceptive girl.
She's a friggin' genius. Takes after her mom.
As long as people "dont get it" the Turner Prize will be worth something - of course if you "get it" then it is worth something. So it's not a dead prize, it is an undead prize - that's what we are dealing with. Not merit, but the cachet of those that get it vs everyone else.
Same with the Becks Future's prize, which makes light of prizes. Or maybe the turner prize makes fun of prizes and the becks futures doesn't get it. DOnt even get me started on the McArthur "genius" grant as applicable to artists. You'd have to look pretty hard for a more clueless, racist (In a good way!) sexist, jury. Oh but they have so much credibility compared to....what?
The fact is awards are often given to promote something (a school, a country, donation from rich benefactors, minorities, WASPS, my people, our kind of people, your people, the chosen few, the chosen ones) and less on objective merit. It's a difference of philosophy.
I don't like the art made by any of the Stuckists (past or present) but I admire their moxie.
I really only looked at Billy Childish's work online, and I have to say it doesn't look all that awesome to me or anything, but as I always say, I wouldn't want to judge from JPEGs. Some of it looks pretty good and some of it could be great in person. Or not.
Clearly you are not like me, quick to rush to judgement. Kudos to you my dear fellow.
crywalt. you are a moron.