Exhibitions

1993 Turner Prize: Exhibition of Short- listed Artists

(Tate Gallery, till 28 November)

Prized apart

Giles Auty

No single event in the British calendar of contemporary art is so likely to polarise opinions as the Turner Prize, which is worth £20,000 these days to its winner. Sev- eral other large prizes for art exist which are backed by commercial sponsors and which are no less valuable, but none gener- ates a fraction of the controversy that the Turner Prize excites.

The reason for this is simple. It is the heavy involvement in the affair of the Tate Gallery, Britain's premier institution of liv- ing art, which so irritates the prize's critics. The Tate does not just exhibit and publi- cise an exhibition of works by short-listed artists but plays host also to the prize- giving ceremony itself and the extensive celebrations that go with it. The Tate fur- ther provides in the person of its director, Nicholas Serota, the invariable chairman of the Turner Prize juries. These juries com- prise four other members, including an art critic based in Britain. However, the direc- tor's influence is almost certainly decisive not just in the choice of artists the juries finally agree but in the picking of the jurors themselves. Thus no one whose views con- flict fundamentally with those of the direc- tor is likely to become a juror in the first place. Irrespective of the identity of the commercial sponsor, this particular event takes place under the perceived impri- matur of a national institution. Imagine a similar involvement in the Booker Prize by the National Library.

For the past three years, the Turner Prize has been sponsored by Channel 4. In other circumstances, Channel 4 might have been expected to provide its viewing public with even-handed coverage of this kind of event. As it happens, the partisan promo- tion of the prize of which it is the donor and the eulogistic programmes it produces on the subject do nothing to encourage public trust in the whole enterprise. Chan- nel 4 would be a laughing-stock if its cover- age of other matters of current public interest were half as biased.

As an exercise in poor public relations both by the Tate Gallery and by Channel 4, the Turner Prize as handled at present would be hard to improve upon. By now probably the only people who care which of this year's short-listed artists will carry off the cash are the contestants themselves. In spite of the enormous efforts made each year to drum up public support for the prize, scepticism has become deep-rooted even among those who can be bothered to take an interest. Supposing there is some- thing to be said for art prizes in the first place, why has this particular one become so discredited and disliked?

The first major mistake made by the prize's originators was to hijack the name of a man who remains arguably the most revered domestic artist in the history of this country. Turner was much more than sim- ply an artistic innovator. He was an artist of staggering knowledge and technical accom- plishment. This is why the country as a whole is none too keen to see his name associated with artists for whom no such general regard exists. Yet however provok- ing this initial error may have been it was Fong Phaophanit constructs his 'Neon Rice Field, 1993 just the first in a series of serious misjudg- ments made by the prize's originators.

The greater tactical mistake by far was to force into the open, on an annual basis, those fierce conflicts of taste and judgment which quietly simmer away in the back- ground otherwise. The general nature of the art made by those short-listed recently for the prize and the justifications given for this demonstrate very clearly the predilec- tions of those who administer art in this country. The new breed of art administra- tor, often full of Marxist or feminist zeal, or a lethal cocktail of the two, certainly does not view his or her role in living art as that of a passive observer but much more as an active instrument, persuading or impelling art to move in directions per- ceived as correct. In the chilling words attributed by Mrs Thatcher to Douglas Jay and quoted by Irwin Stelzer in this paper two weeks ago: 'the gentleman in Whitehall really does know better what is good for the people than the people know them- selves'. For Whitehall read Millbank: the art administrators of today, whether at the Tate Gallery or in other publicly funded galleries or British art institutions, do not hesitate to try to direct the course taken by living art. The Turner Prize is simply the most visible aspect of this trend.

This is a dangerous development, but criticism of it, whether it comes from estab- lished commentators or from the general public, does not deter such people in the slightest. The narrowness of their training has led them to believe that in all dealings with outsiders they are always and inevitably in the right.

While the Turner Prize has created con- troversy since it began in 1984, recent changes in its rules have served to deepen the divide still further. The wording of the prize's requirements was sufficiently woolly from the beginning to allow certain obvious and eminent candidates to slip through its net. In the last three years an upper age limit has been included. Today the prize is given to 'a British artist under 50 for an outstanding exhibition or other presenta- tion of their work in the preceding 12 months'. The effect of setting an upper age limit has been to cause many to assume that the prize is the exclusive preserve now of modish artistic radicals.

This view has surely been encouraged by the selections made since an age limit was introduced. Channel 4 has not helped either by stating, 'We have seized the opportunity to promote the newest and best in British art'. But, as we all know, novelty is not a positive quality in itself since change can as easily be for the worse as well as the better. Needless to add, this elementary point eludes the mental grasp of the prize's publicists. From the tabloid press up, the low level of discourse about the prize is one of its more disappointing features.

Nor can the artists themselves be said to help. Listen to the explanatory statements made by the short-listed artists and relayed on a video at their exhibition. Three of them speak in the strange, garbled lan- guage of art-school cliché; in their mouths words such as 'challenge', 'strategy' and `enigma' are slowly drained of sensible meaning. Their training has not encour- aged them to think or express themselves clearly; indeed, in some cases it appears to have numbed them for life.

This year's Turner Prize short list com- prises a photographer, an abstract painter, a quasi-sculptor and a maker of installa- tions: Hannah Collins, Sean Scully, Rachel Whiteread and Vong Phaophanit respec- tively. The art of the first three involves what I cannot help thinking of as relatively simple decisions. Thus Scully, who is 48, has always painted stripes and merely does so now in different and slightly more com- plex configurations. One might think many would find such an activity insufficiently stimulating even for a week, let alone an entire working life, but Scully has ploughed this singular furrow to considerable profes- sional profit.

Rachel Whiteread also has a simple idea: to make three-dimensional, sculptural 'neg- atives' of mundane household objects up to and including a whole house itself. Once again, the basic idea seems like something one might do to pass a wet Thursday: a semi-amusing conceit but hardly sustain- able, certainly not as a basis for an entire career. Fortunately for Whiteread, she has eulogists who discover in her inert lumps of plaster, concrete or other substances much of the meaning of life.

Hannah Collins takes photographs, as do a great many people, but unlike the rest of us gets her negatives blown up into giant black-and-white prints. In spite of their great size and often appealing subject mat- ter — the back streets of Barcelona photographic prints lack for me the reso- nance necessary in major art. A large paint- ing based on the perceived world can carry infinite layers of meaning. Its production will have involved scores of thousands of separate, complex and often extremely dif- ficult decisions, to say nothing of skills. It is the combination of these which gives seri- ous painting such resonance. Photography, on the other hand, involves a very small number of basic decisions such as subject and viewpoint and, outside printing skills, involves only the ability to press a shutter.

I have not seen Vong Phaophanit's installations before and hope I will not dis- appoint you by saying that tons of rice interspersed with neon tubes neither shock nor dismay me. On the other hand, I do not think they will excite or interest me any more tomorrow than today, nor reveal one iota more about themselves or the human condition however long I studied them. This is why rice is an impoverished expres- sive tool when compared with the possibili-

ties of painting. Many critics profess a belief that significant art can be made from anything, but I am not among them: this post-Duchampian liberation has brought more penalties than profits. However, out- side the tiny, inner hubs of art, very few people believe that this assertion has been proved to the satisfaction of thinking peo- ple. Although the art world behaves as though its trendier tenets are viewed uni- versally as received wisdom, it could not be more mistaken. The reason why outsiders will not accept many of the art world's `truths' is that they are not truths at all but merely fashionable orthodoxies.

The Turner Prize brings such issues to the surface. It is always likely that more bridges will be burned than built when art which is of real interest only to a tiny sec- tion of our population is held up annually for national admiration. All this reveals is the giant chasm between those empowered to run art on the public's behalf and the public which pays them. The problem has yet to be addressed satisfactorily and left- over public resentments are merely put away like unused fireworks to be dragged out and set off again the following Novem- ber. A lot of inconsequential rubbish is written about the Turner Prize but this should not conceal the fact that a serious problem exists. A prudent director of a public institution such as the Tate would address it.