What the "Old Fogey" says ...

"Chris Ofili, who's he?" ask this year's finalists. "Oh, you mean that stuffy old master, the one who actually paints?".  For what does painting or any semblance to accepted art forms have to do with the Turner Prize indeed.  This year the British public are being told that washing machines disguised as cameras and teenage pornography is "ART".
Jane and Louise Wilson ,Tracey Emin , Steve McQueen , and Steven Pippin are the finalists this year and not a painter among them. We are wondering if they should not take the name of Britain's greatest ever painter J.M.W. Turner out of the "Turner Prize" and call it the "Tate Prize" instead.  Has it not become an insult to the memory of Turner?

The exhibition opened to the usual controversy. Tracey Emin's exhibit (we refrain from using the term 'work of art') seems to be a personal statement of her exciting social life. It consists of a rumpled bed decorated with soiled condoms, champagne corks and dirty underwear. 

We are then subjected to an explicit video tape of  tawdry teenage sex supposedly of Tracey aged fourteen having fun the British way "by the sea". This exhibit falls clearly in the school of "Saatchi Sensationalism" and  has predictably stirred the most criticism amongst viewers. What will this Hirst-led Y.B.A. movement become known as in years to come? Saatchism? School of Saatchi?

Stephen Pippin is the inventor of the 'camera obscura' washing machine which produces foggy images that no doubt some paid critic will elucidate us upon. Carrying through the hackneyed theme of photographic and video media are the Wilson twins who sat down and went through National Geographic magazines till they hit upon two American locations, Hoover Dam and Las Vegas casinos as appropriate victims. Tate visitors will muse upon these highly esoteric American cultural institutions viewed on giant video screens.  In a fit of  "America envy" the twins seem to say why don't we have such meaningful, beautiful spaces in Britain? If they team up with Emin the two exhibits could read, "Blackpool the Las Vegas of the British Isles".

By now you are yawning at the tedium of  yet more film media when you arrive at Steve McQueen's silent film tribute to Buster Keaton.

Tate director Stephen Deuchar in charge of Turner Prize propaganda has said "It's a brilliant exhibition -- but of course it is not an objective or rounded selection."

We invite our British readers who bother to visit the Turner Prize circus to send us your reactions. We ask you to send in your 'gut reaction' not an informed one after you have studied the pamphlet or catalogue.

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from our own ex-Courtauld Old Fogey correspondent in London on the Turner Prize 1999
 

AND THE WINNER IS....Steve McQueen's most popular work " Deadpan " is a direct reference to the work of Hollywood legend Buster Keaton. Now crowned the prince of cutting edge British art

McQUEEN  the artist Film-maker Steve McQueen beat hot favourite TRACEY EMIN and we say "Thank Heavens!" - for at least we won't have to look at Tracey's grungy bed and knickers anymore. Let her take it to Christie's auction house and some feeble minded executive will probably pay much more for it than the Turner prize is worth. But will he have to call Tracey up every time he wants his bed made? McQueen is a film maker who went to all the right art schools, which the Tate jury seem to like.  McQUEEN  EXPLAINED  As ARTnewspaper.com cannot remain impartial we will instead quote three critics below : two in favour of McQueen and the Turner Prize and one who is against. Perhaps it will explain what exactly McQueen did that led a posse of art critics and curators to feel he is worthy of the prize. Normally in an art prize we could reproduce the image on ARTnewspaper.com but as it is in video form, we can only present this verbal description. The prize jury awarded McQueen the award for the  "poetry and clarity of his vision, the range of his work, its emotional intensity and economy of means". The jury, chaired by Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota, was also excited by his "continuing intellectual and technical evolution". McQueen was presented with the prize by architect Zaha Hadid. Channel 4, which has  sponsored the award since 1991, also  announced that it will continue its support for  three more years. THE McQUEEN FILMS  'PREY' : films a tape recorder playing the sound of tap dancing which later drifts off beneath a balloon  'DEADPAN':  a recreation of a well known Buster Keaton silent movie stunt in which a building front collapses, falling around him. TWO CRITICS EXPLAIN  Richard Cork, art critic for The Times explains the qualities he sees in McQueen's'DEADPAN' and 'PREY':   "Deadpan, the most widely admired of his exhibits in the 1999 Turner Prize exhibition, takes, as its starting-point, a Buster Keaton stunt from a 1928 film called Steamboat Bill Jr.  The relentless downward movement of Deadpan is reversed in his new film, Prey. It looks earthbound at first, as an anonymous hand switches on a two-spool tape machine resting in the grass.  After Deadpan’s arresting silence, the sound of tap dancing comes as a shock. And just as we begin to wonder why McQueen fastens up the tape, the entire machine is suddenly hoisted into the air by a white balloon.  With dizzying speed the grass becomes open fields, and then we find ourselves surrounded by sky as the balloon takes its strange cargo higher and higher.  The unlikely sound of airborne tap dancing grows faint, as the machine threatens to vanish in the void. But it never quite disappears, and in the end plummets back to the ground with an inconsequential bump. We should be left with a feeling of bathos. Against the odds, though, Prey generates a lasting sense of suspended exhilaration.  Just as Emin asserts her undaunted determination to keep on dancing, McQueen affirms the artist’s insistence on letting the imagination take flight." It is perhaps a testament to Keaton’s skill, that suggests McQueen’s recreation of the familiar stunt remains thrilling.  Luke McKernan of The British Film Institute elucidates further  on 'DEADPAN': "Without the benefit of sound, the star had to create visual images which would “linger in the mind.  McQueen uses himself as the absurd yet resilient figure who makes no attempt to escape from a falling house. He fills the end wall with Deadpan, making viewers feel that the house is descending on them as well.  It pitches forward with frightening speed and heaviness, accentuated by McQueen’s decision to film the event from several different vantages.  Repeating the fall serves to increase our respect for the man who defies it.  He knows that the blank window will save him, by passing neatly over his head and crashing at his feet. But his refusal to do anything except blink still seems laudable, and the film terminates with McQueen’s steady, impassive face staring out stoically from the screen.  Without indulging in Hollywood heroics, he seems braced to endure adversity with calm, stubborn resolve." Accepting his award,  Mr McQueen made a very brief speech, saying: "I would like to thank my family and friends who are here tonight ... that's it really."

The Turner Prize is awarded to a British artist under 50 for an outstanding exhibition or other  presentation of their work in the twelve months preceding 16 May 1999. The Prize was established in 1984 by the Tate Gallery's Patrons of New Art and is intended to promote public discussion of new developments in contemporary British art. It is widely recognized as one of the most important and prestigious awards for the visual arts in Europe.

              The shortlisted artists are: 

    Tracey Emin for her exhibitions in New York and Japan in which she continued to show her versatility across a wide range of media, her vibrancy and flair for self-expression. 

    Steven Pippin for his exhibition Laundromat-Locomotion in San Francisco and Philadelphia in  which he transformed twelve laundry machines into cameras in an ambitious experiment exploring the relationship between vision and motion through photography. 

    Jane & Louise Wilson for their exhibition Gamma at the Lisson Gallery which revealed the  wit, intelligence and drama of their work in video, sculpture and photography. 

    The winner of the £20,000 prize will be announced at the Tate Gallery on 30 November 1999 during a live broadcast by Channel 4. Work by the shortlisted artists will be shown in an exhibition at the Tate Gallery from 20 October 1999 until 6 February 2000. 

     The members of the 1999 Turner Prize Jury are: Bernhard Burgi, Director of the Kunsthalle, Zurich; Sacha Craddock, writer and critic; Judith Nesbitt, Head of Programming, Whitechapel Art Gallery; Alice Rawsthorn, representative of the Patrons of New Art; Nicholas Serota, Director of the Tate Gallery and Chairman of the Jury. 
 

Pillow-fight at Tracy Emin's Bed at The Tate Gallery "My Bed"  by Tracey Emin. Two Chinese performance artists jumped at Tracey Emin's unmade bed at the Tate Gallery on Sunday to have a pillow fight. We suspect it may all have been a publicity stunt from the artist's own spin doctors. The two men, Jian JunXi, 37, and Yuan Cai, 43, distributed leaflets advertising their intention to perform on the bed, then leapt upon it at 1pm and began to assault each other with pillows until they were apprehended by staff of the Art Museum. It is not reported if they were charged with vandalizing a "work of art" - we doubt anyone would have the nerve. In America you cannot charge anyone with the felony of damaging a work of art in a public gallery unless the work is valued over $1,500. Apparently it took Emin five hours to re-create her "master piece" with the help of the curators putting back her soiled sheets in the proper disorder but we noticed some 'before' and 'after' differences.

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