Quentin Letts says the public resists condemning the Turner Prize art for fear of being "denounced as ignoramuses", while Charlotte Higgins denounces Michael Gove for describing the work as #modishcrap.
Quentin Letts:
The elderly man standing beside me at London’s Tate Britain gallery yesterday thought a mechanical hooting noise going off around us was all part of the artwork.
We were staring at an alleged masterpiece that had won the 2016 Turner Prize, that annual £25,000 nonsense — part-organised by the BBC — which identifies ‘the best’ British modern artists under 50. Whoop-whoop-whoop it kept going. The old boy liked this. He chuckled appreciatively. Oh well, at last the Turner Prize had thrown up something mildly engaging.
It was only when a security guard came bustling over that we realised the beeping was an alarm we had activated by standing too close to Helen Marten’s ‘Night-blooming Genera’. Oops. Sorry. The confusion was understandable, mind you. The artwork is a jumble of plasticky odds and ends bolted together and hung in the air underneath the sort of pine shelf you might buy from Ikea... Keep reading on the Mail Online
Charlotte Higgins:
Oh, it quite takes one back to the good old days when Kim Howells, once upon a time Labour arts minister, remarked of the 2002 Turner prize shortlist that it was “cold, mechanical, conceptual bullshit”. That verdict was delivered, quaintly, via a comment card pinned to the wall of the Tate, back when Britain was conjoined to the continent, the planet was a welter of primordial slime, and Twitter had not yet been invented. At least Howells’ condemnation had a certain ring to it.
Quentin Letts:
The elderly man standing beside me at London’s Tate Britain gallery yesterday thought a mechanical hooting noise going off around us was all part of the artwork.
We were staring at an alleged masterpiece that had won the 2016 Turner Prize, that annual £25,000 nonsense — part-organised by the BBC — which identifies ‘the best’ British modern artists under 50. Whoop-whoop-whoop it kept going. The old boy liked this. He chuckled appreciatively. Oh well, at last the Turner Prize had thrown up something mildly engaging.
It was only when a security guard came bustling over that we realised the beeping was an alarm we had activated by standing too close to Helen Marten’s ‘Night-blooming Genera’. Oops. Sorry. The confusion was understandable, mind you. The artwork is a jumble of plasticky odds and ends bolted together and hung in the air underneath the sort of pine shelf you might buy from Ikea... Keep reading on the Mail Online
Charlotte Higgins:
Oh, it quite takes one back to the good old days when Kim Howells, once upon a time Labour arts minister, remarked of the 2002 Turner prize shortlist that it was “cold, mechanical, conceptual bullshit”. That verdict was delivered, quaintly, via a comment card pinned to the wall of the Tate, back when Britain was conjoined to the continent, the planet was a welter of primordial slime, and Twitter had not yet been invented. At least Howells’ condemnation had a certain ring to it.
On the other hand, Michael Gove’s tweet about this year’s prize (won by Helen Marten on Monday night) is boundlessly oafish... Keep reading on The Guardian