ArtOrb .co.uk - Contemporary Art Online

The History of the Turner Prize: An Outline

Since it was founded in 1984, the Turner Prize has always been restricted to artists under the age of 50, but in its early years it was less of a PR exercise to give relatively young artists a push up the ladder and much more about marking artists� past achievement. In the 1980s it was won by recognised major figures such as Howard Hodgkin, Tony Cragg and Richard Long, all well into their forties at the time. In the 1990s, the demographic changed markedly; every artist who won was in their thirties - artists such as Rachel Whiteread, Damien Hirst and Gillian Wearing - for whom the Turner Prize was not so much an underlining of their accepted status but an opportunity to get some serious leverage in the contemporary art system.

- from the Scotsman - full article online at: http://www.arts.scotsman.com/visual/headlines_specific.cfm?id=4115&rware=PWTAHSGHTCJV&
CQ_CUR_DOCUMENT=1

London Art Elite Led?

The taste of this London Art Elite and the artists they choose to patronise and represent, now defines to a large degree what constitutes significant contemporary British art. You can ditch the old idea that good will out. This is a culture where careers are constructed by ruthless intent, not serendipitous chance, where art becomes commodified like stocks and shares, and where the potential financial rewards can be enormous for the artists themselves , and for those who invest in or deal in their work.

- from the Scotsman - full article online at: http://www.arts.scotsman.com/visual/headlines_specific.cfm?id=4115&rware=PWTAHSGHTCJV&
CQ_CUR_DOCUMENT=1

Related article from the Observer - On Sam Taylor-Wood, celeb artist? wife of White Cube owner and 'market-maker' Jap Jopling - full article online at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4296517,00.html

The Opposition to the Prize: Wizened Reactionaries?

Burning with a hard, gem-like flame, Serota has used the prize to turn up the temperature of artistic awareness in this country, to the point where we are deserving of Tate Modern, our own palace of contemporary aesthetics....
...Enter the jokers. The rude girls, the self-promoters, the empty-wallers, the body-parters, the failed filmmakers, the failed window-dressers, the pseudo-painters...

from the Observer - full article online at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4092952,00.html

Is the Turner Prize Good for Art?

Matthew Collings says yes

I think the Turner Prize is an indisputably good and valuable cultural event. It gets people talking about creativity and ideas. Anyone can go and you can say what you like. You can turn on the tap marked furious: 'Grr, Duchamp, Huff puff, videos!' Or you can be a bit more factual and observant. Actually the second is better....
...Are the judges a sinister power �lite? This isn't a mystery - they're quite bland power people of the art world. They don't set trends or have ideas; they follow them. The Turner Prize isn't responsible for art being how it is. With all its corporate smoothing-up over the last 10 years, it hasn't changed art, it's followed the way art has changed itself.

from the Observer - full article online at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4092952,00.html