Triumf fotografikow (Nagroda Turnera)
Leszek Andrzej Kleczkowski
By Nigel Reynolds
How inspiration can be mistaken for imitation
FOR the first time in its history the £20,000 Turner Prize was awarded
last night to a stills photographer, Wolfgang Tillmans, a German whose
special line is taking pornographic homosexual pictures.
Winner: Wolfgang Tillmans
The former style and fashion photographer, whose claim to be an artist is
challenged by some critics, emerged from a shortlist of four after one of
the quietest and dullest contests for years.
The superseding of the Damien Hirst group of conceptual artists by a new
generation meant that there were no sliced cows, elephant dung or dirty
beds this year, although many people's favourite to win, the Japanese
artist Tomoko Takahashi, entered a room full of junk - a reflection on
failing her driving test.
Tillmans, 32, made his name as a photographer in London charting street
culture, Gay Pride and the rise of the clubbing generation for magazines
such as The Face and i-D. For the Turner Prize exhibition at Tate Britain,
he submitted 57 photographs, unframed and some stuck to the walls with
tape.
There are pictures of Concorde, street scenes, scenes on the Underground,
lovers and friends. Only one, a photograph of a man with his jeans
unzipped, gives a clue to some of his other work. W H Smith, the
newsagent, once banned a magazine with a spread of homo-erotic images
taken by Tillmans. He has also photographed a naked man with chained
nipples masturbating and a former male lover urinating on a chair.
Critics have been divided over his work. Matthew Collings, of The
Observer, wrote, "I had no idea why Tillmans is supposed to be artist. If
he wins, the message will be that the Tate . . . wants to get down and
boogie in an embarrassing way with youthful airheads who read The Face."
The Independent's Tom Lubbock says that together Tillmans's pictures
"become a statement of 'the way we live now', studiedly casual glimpses of
a studiedly casual lifestyle, a tedious hymn of self-regarding boho
authenticity". But The Telegraph's Richard Dorment says: "You can't sum
Tillmans up. He's all over the place and his art is all the stronger for
that."
The Turner prize, which has helped to champion contemporary art and is
seldom awarded to a painter, has previously been won by two video artists
- Gillian Wearing and, last year, Steve McQueen - but it has never gone to
a stills photographer.
There had been strong hopes that the prize would go to a painter this
year. There were two - Glenn Brown, the only British artist on the
shortlist, and Dutch-born Michael Raedecker.
Sir Nicholas Serota, chairman of the prize jury, said the fact that there
was only one British artist on the list was not a result of British
artists "not being up to scratch". He said: "I think it is a question of
recognising that the culture here is much richer than we could define by
those who have simply been born in this country."
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Smart questions to stupid answers
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