Stories & Articles by Ted Meyer

Mind the Crap
First Published in Coagula Magazine     

“Each show is a separate ticket” I was told. “The Turner prize is 4 pounds ($8) and the Hans Holbein exhibit is 8 pounds ($16).

The toothy woman behind the ticket counter at the Tate Britain continued, “Each show should take about 45 minutes to walk through”.

The Turner Prize, though often ridiculed, is of course THE show place for the best British art has to offer in 2006. The only criteria are that you be British artist or artist working in Britain under fifty for an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work in the twelve months preceding May 9th 2006.

Having the current best of Britain shown in the same building with Hans Holbein, regarded as one of the best British artists, the man who brought the Renaissance in painting to England and the best of Henry VIII court painters is a tricky proposition and gives us a striking view of how far modern (British) art has fallen.

Let’s start with the ticket counter woman’s claim that each show would take 45 minutes to walk through. The Turner show took us a total of 7 minutes and we were passed by several others as we strolled though the gallery. There is nothing that required a close look or inspired a sense of wonder. The gallery space was nearly empty. The Hans Holbein show took over two hours to view. The place was packed. Everyone slowly inspecting each sketch and painting from the huge and iconic Henry the VIII to the smallest miniature painted on a piece of jewelry that Hans had designed himself. Though this show like so many others in European museums was mostly portraits of dead white guys, the craftsmanship and variety pulled everyone in. The sheer volume produced by Holbein (and no doubt his studio assistants) was astounding.

The 2006 Turner show consists of four artists. Rebecca Warren, Phil Colllins, Tomma Abta and another guy whose work was so forgettable that neither of us even remembered seeing it an hour later, so we won’t even discuss him.

Rebecca Warren’s work is described on the Tate web site as “unfired clay sculptures (that) project a sense of unleashed creativity, appearing to explode out of and merge back into the amorphous properties of the material”.

In English, the language spoken in most of Britain, Warren’s work is globs of clay dropped on one another resembling a crude formless Giacometti or clumps of clay with fingerprints jammed into them as a five year old might. When compared to Hobein's well crafted sculptures designed for Jane Seymour’s coronation these seemed especially weak, juvenile and pointless.

Phil Collins “investigates our ambivalent relationship with the camera as both an instrument of attraction and manipulation, of revelation and shame”. Again, in English, Mr. Collins got 9 people who had been on reality TV shows to tell us why their 15 minutes of fame turned against them. A good idea for a magazine story, but good enough for the Turner prize? I think not. The best part of Collins' exhibit is the production studio he set up in the museum gallery with willing assistants waiting for those who felt screwed by reality TV to call in and bitch about it. Through the big glass wall you could watch these arty assistant producers answer their email. You could watch them check their MySpace pages. However, while we were there it seemed as if the angry hordes of reality TV participants were not phoning in to complain.

This years winner, Tomma Abta, says of her work, “As the internal logic of each composition unfolds forms are defined, buried and rediscovered until the painting becomes ‘congruent with itself’.” I don’t even know what the English translation for that is, and I speak English, but I can tell you that anyone who has taken a beginning acrylic painting class and has painted hard edged graphics is familiar with what Abta has done here. Though she does add some oil paint and an extra layer of paper here and there for some punch this is really beginner stuff. As a friend said, “This is the kind of work that makes people hate modern art”.

Her images, all 48x38 centimeters on paper, claim to “pitch the rational against the intuitive”. Rational or not, her shapes and color choices are obvious and I am really at a loss to understand how this could possibly be the best in Britain.

When comparing these large flat shapes to the amazingly intricate work in the 40 portraits and smaller subject paintings in the Holbein show you just have to ask yourself, “Where is the skill? Where is the beauty?”.

Maybe I’m just looking at all this Turner art in the wrong way. The Tate website says the Turner prize “is intended to promote public discussion of new developments in contemporary British art.” It could be I need to shed my expectations that art should be more than just the concept. Even if my belief that you need creativity AND the ability to execute with skill is dated and art can now just some grand idea floating out there in space, where is the thought process in the Turner Prize final four?”.

At the end of the Turner exhibit viewers were asked to leave comments on small square pieces of paper and post them on the wall. One, neatly printed in blue ink said it all, “Oh my God, and I don’t mean that in a good way”.