Madonna Presents Top Art Prize to Empty Room
Jillie
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In article <rjfb1u4hcsa6jnuuh...@4ax.com>, Kevan
<cut...@shreve.net> wrote:
> Madonna Presents Top Art Prize to Empty Room
>
> LONDON (Reuters) - Pop superstar Madonna on Sunday presented
> one of the world's most famous art prizes to conceptual
> artist Martin Creed for his controversial creation 'Bare
> Room with a Light that Switches on and off'.
>
> To win the 20,000 pound ($28,600) Turner Prize, Creed fought
> off competition from a video about two gay cowboys, a dusty
> storeroom piled high with junk and a film of a disheveled
> alcoholic being brought a cup of tea by his wife.
>
> The Turner Prize, won in the past by an elephant dung
> painting and pickled animal carcasses, invariably stirs
> tabloid controversy, receives a critical battering and
> attracts up to 100,000 people annually to London's Tate
> Britain museum.
>
> The choice of Creed, whose other works include crumpled
> pieces of paper, looked set to enrage traditionalists, who
> condemn the Turner as a national joke which makes a mockery
> of modern art.
>
> Creed, 33, unconcerned by all the fuss, understood why some
> people laugh at his work, admitting recently: "I can see why
> some people take the piss out of me."
>
> But the judges admired his "audacity in presenting a single
> work in the exhibition." They also noted its "strength,
> rigor, wit and sensitivity to the site" and said his work
> was "engaging, wide-ranging and fresh."
>
> The Turner, which has always reveled in controversy, won
> added glamour this year with the presentation by Madonna,
> who is an avid collector of contemporary art and a major fan
> of Mexican surrealist and feminist icon Frida Kahlo.
>
> Madonna recently loaned Kahlo's "Self-portrait with Monkey"
> to a Tate Modern surrealist exhibition.
>
> Mike Nelson's dusty storeroom piled high with junk had been
> the hot favorite with bookmakers to land the prize.
>
> They reported the heaviest betting year since Tracey Emin
> bid unsuccessfully for glory in 1999 with an unmade bed
> covered in condoms, soiled knickers and champagne corks.
>
> The Turner judges have always been masters of publicity with
> their annual selection being mocked by critics but fiercely
> defended by avant-garde supporters as cutting edge art.
>
> In 1995, Damien Hirst won the notorious prize with a pickled
> cow and calf, a win that launched him on the road to stardom
> as the "bad boy of Brit art."
>
> In 1998 Chris Ofili won with elephant dung paintings that
> later sparked outrage when exhibited in New York.
>--
Thank you for posting this. I'm in the middle of curating a 'September 11,
2001' exhibit for a local art museum. Some of the pieces I just got approved
for display by the director was one with 'Oral Sex' in the title, one that
is a display of the braille version of the New York Times from 9/11, an
interactive game installation of the Afghanistan Theater of War complete
with remote controlled missle playing pieces (you collect oil wells to win),
a silk-screened propaganda poster parody of an Afghani child on crutches in
the foreground mewling "He promised me a better country", and a two minute
video of Dan Rather's emotional moments of silence slowed down and spliced
together from the morning of 9/11.
I can handle the conceptual stuff a lot better than the schmaltzy symbolism.
I got a proposal for a giant monument of a crying (complete with an eye)
anatomically gory heart being held and squeezed by a fist that dripped blood
into a collection pool that was the shape of the map of the 48 contiguous
states.
And flags, lots and lots of flags. Flags made out of PVC pipe. Flags with
phoenixes. A flag sticking out of a toilet. Flags in oil, acrylic,
watercolor, pastel, and ceramic. Flags.
The 'Oral Sex' piece is going to cause a ruckus. It's by a man. He's
critiquing the alleged male need to whip out their giant war machine
protesthetic penii and fight wars over the women. The piece has a lot of
text that will offend half the population and ruin the children.
HeadMrs. Salacia the Overseer
Director of Programming & Keeper of the Seven Squeals