Like last summer, I find myself once again using my spare time to try and make further head way in understanding this crazy mass of relationships, events and history they call the art world. I have been reading 'The Turner Prize and British Art', published in 2007 by Tate. A few chapters took my fancy, but I particularly enjoyed one discussing the phenomenon of prizes in the cultural world, in which Mark Lawson, Grayson Perry and Lionel Shriver bat some thoughts about. I'd like to quote some snippets from it because they seem particularly articulate on the state of things.
GP (The Turner Prize) is contemporary art, yes. Alan Bennett said that there should be a sign outside the National Gallery, saying, you don't have to like everything, and I think that is something that needs to be rammed home again and again to people. You know, come to the Turner Prize, you might like none of it, you might like all of it. People don't feel qualified to discern because it's an alien language to them. The art world has its own language, and all contemporary art, to some extent, even if it's rebelling against it, is addressing the 'lingua franca' of contemporary art. I think you're a fool if you ignore its existence, because it's like someone going to France and shouting in English... You have got to acknowledge that contemporary art has its orthodoxies now. It has its history and its way of doing things. You pick up a kind of thought process of people in the art world from living around it for decades, because it's very isolated. It's not like the literary world where you have to take into consideration popularity, because the people who buy art are insiders on the whole. Most of the collectors want to be part of the difficult - now slightly glamorous - world of art. So in a way it doesn't matter what the public think. They can come along and look at this prize and say, rubbish. The only people who want it to be popular are museums. They want footfall.
ML You talk about centuries of approval and disapproval that have gone into great works of art. I have this argument with people from the Mail and the Telegraph all the time, because it seems to me amazing that they don't realise when they say filth in the Turner Prize or whatever, that middle-class favourites, for example, Judi Dench in Chekhov or Ian McKellan in Strindberg, were just as controversial at first. I mean there were literally riots on the first nights of these plays. Ibsen was accused of bringing sewage out of the streets into the theatres. There doesn't seem any acknowledgement of the process that most art is going to be against the middlebrow conventions of the time, if it's going to be any good.
I know its not quite what Mark Lawson is talking about, but I find it interesting that within my little year group at college, the people whose art I really objected to, only 6 months ago, are the people who actually now inspire me to 'go further'. As for Grayson Perry's argument, I usually use a similar analogy myself when explaining to people that art has its own language, that you really need to be versed in, before you can make an informed opinion. And actually its a bit arrogant to think that any tom, dick or harry, can take it at face value and write a letter of disgust to the Sun about it. I usually use the analogy of wine though. I can say I don't like the taste of a particular bottle... but it might be considered the best by a wine buff... something like that.
GP (The Turner Prize) is contemporary art, yes. Alan Bennett said that there should be a sign outside the National Gallery, saying, you don't have to like everything, and I think that is something that needs to be rammed home again and again to people. You know, come to the Turner Prize, you might like none of it, you might like all of it. People don't feel qualified to discern because it's an alien language to them. The art world has its own language, and all contemporary art, to some extent, even if it's rebelling against it, is addressing the 'lingua franca' of contemporary art. I think you're a fool if you ignore its existence, because it's like someone going to France and shouting in English... You have got to acknowledge that contemporary art has its orthodoxies now. It has its history and its way of doing things. You pick up a kind of thought process of people in the art world from living around it for decades, because it's very isolated. It's not like the literary world where you have to take into consideration popularity, because the people who buy art are insiders on the whole. Most of the collectors want to be part of the difficult - now slightly glamorous - world of art. So in a way it doesn't matter what the public think. They can come along and look at this prize and say, rubbish. The only people who want it to be popular are museums. They want footfall.
ML You talk about centuries of approval and disapproval that have gone into great works of art. I have this argument with people from the Mail and the Telegraph all the time, because it seems to me amazing that they don't realise when they say filth in the Turner Prize or whatever, that middle-class favourites, for example, Judi Dench in Chekhov or Ian McKellan in Strindberg, were just as controversial at first. I mean there were literally riots on the first nights of these plays. Ibsen was accused of bringing sewage out of the streets into the theatres. There doesn't seem any acknowledgement of the process that most art is going to be against the middlebrow conventions of the time, if it's going to be any good.
I know its not quite what Mark Lawson is talking about, but I find it interesting that within my little year group at college, the people whose art I really objected to, only 6 months ago, are the people who actually now inspire me to 'go further'. As for Grayson Perry's argument, I usually use a similar analogy myself when explaining to people that art has its own language, that you really need to be versed in, before you can make an informed opinion. And actually its a bit arrogant to think that any tom, dick or harry, can take it at face value and write a letter of disgust to the Sun about it. I usually use the analogy of wine though. I can say I don't like the taste of a particular bottle... but it might be considered the best by a wine buff... something like that.
