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International |
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The
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
from 5 June to 13 August
The Winner: Marc Quinn's
marble sculpture 'Catherine Long'
| It has long been a bone of contention
with the hundreds of amateurs who enter the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
each year and see it somehow as their exhibition, that the prizes
should be awarded to prominent commercially successful artists. Previous
winners include David Hockney, John Hoyland and RB Kitaj.This year's winner
is MARC QUINN (b. London 1964) a Cambridge graduate who is already
known throughout Europe and the US with works in the Tate, the Pompidou
and New York's MoMa. He became famous overnightn years ago when he
exhibited a bust made of his own frozen blood.
So all the hopeful undiscovered artists who generally favour more traditional figurative styles will be miffed that such an art star has pocketed the £25,000 prize and the accolades that go with it. The prize money being less than the current market value of one of Quinn's pieces, he is hardly in the position where he needed the money to launch his career. Peter Blake, the bearded guru of English pop art was this year's exhibition Curator inviting further controversy when he invited bratpack artists like Tracy Emin to participate in what is universally viewed as an ultimately conservative art show, popular with ladies from the counties. Quinn's winning sculpture of the amputee Catherine Long, portrayed naked in white marble had already received an enormous amount of press over the past year so that blows the R.A. Summer Exhibition myth that the entries are selected by a panel of judges without the name of the artist being revealed. Quinn's "Catherine Long" was an iconic image even before it was uncrated in Piccadilly. Grumbling amateurs and champions of the underdog will have to realize that in the end, art prizes like any kind of prize are simply awarded to the best in the class. Perhaps like the popular Music Awards the R.A. could introduce a consolation prize for "best newcomer" hence satisfying the small circle of artworld people who are ardent about Quinn and Emin and the other 90% of Summer Exhibition visitors who preferred that nice portrait of someone's Mum. This report by Rachel Le Goff in London |
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