6th May 2012: Who's made a mark this week?

Probably the most prestigious art prize in the UK is the Turner Prize.  It's also possibly the art prize which comes in for the most flak.  The Washington Post describes it as

Britain's most influential and most-mocked art award

although the Tate describes it thus

The prize is not intended to honour an artist’s lifetime achievements. The aim is to celebrate younger talent and to focus attention on new developments in the visual arts.

The winner of the Turner Prize gets £25,000 with £5,000 going to each of the other shortlisted artists. To be eligible for this year's prize, an artist must be British, under fifty and have had an outstanding exhibition or other presentation of their work - in the visual arts - in the twelve months prior to 24 April 2012.

It gets national press coverage and the winners often go on to become household names.   Past winners include for example: land artist Richard Long (1989); sculptor Rachel Whiteread (1993); sculptor Antony Gormley (1994); atelier artiste Damien Hirst (1995); ceramics artist and printmaker Grayson Perry in 2007.   I forget the rest - they aren't memorable.

Those selected for the shortlist of nominated artists can generate a fair bit of controversy - and some have been stimulated to create an artistic response - from the Stuckist demonstration in 2000 to Banksy's Mind the Crap stencilled onto the steps of the Tate in 2002.  Artists are also made fun of and lampooned in the national press.

Paul Noble Public Toilet, 1999 
Copyright Paul Noble / Gagosian, London

This year the nominated artists are:

• Spartacus Chetwynd - described as "a maverick performer-cum-sculptor" - which means she is a performance artist with an invented name.  Nominated for her solo exhibition Odd Man Out at Sadie Coles HQ, London.  Apparently she....

creates carnivalesque performances and sculptural installations, involving handmade costumes and sets.

• Luke Fowler - a film-maker - for his solo exhibition and film exploring the life and work of Scottish psychiatrist, R. D. Laing at Inverleith House, Edinburgh.  (Aren't there film prizes for this sort of thing?)
• Paul Noble is a man who is a fine draftsman who creates intricate drawings.  The nomination is for his solo exhibition Welcome to Nobson at Gagosian Gallery, London where his exhibition was introduced thus....

Noble’s intricate graphite drawings describe Nobson Newtown, a place composed of labyrinthine edifices and deserted topography embedded with modules of dense detail. Employing cavalier projection—a cartographical method characterized by a high viewpoint—Noble meticulously delineates a wealth of elaborate architecture and open urban spaces.

• Elizabeth Price For her solo exhibition at BALTIC, Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead.  You can read the description of what she does by clicking the link.

It all seems to me to be rather a lot of work about imagination and fantasy with more than a bit of film and drama - although the jurors are desperate to assert it's not a curated exhibition.  However I can't say that the descriptions of what they do make me want to go and see any of their work.  While I'm sure they have their own fans, if this is a representation of the best of contemporary British art then I really do wonder if the art economy might be completely down the toilet.  Or maybe I'm just a bit too pedantic expecting it to be about art (as opposed to "visual arts" in all its ambiguity)

I really do wonder at times whether there needs to be a better definition of "visual arts" or whether the "powers that be" are just happy to blur the boundaries with the theatre and film worlds.  For example if theatre and film are OK, then why not architecture and fashion and contemporary industrial design?

Others commented as follows

• Bryony Quinn (It's Nice That) took A quick, questioning look at the Turner Prize nominees announced today
• Terry Wogan (Yes really!) in The Telegraph commented that The Turner Prize is a funny old game
• Adrian Searle (Guardian) thinks it's a good shortlist Turner prize shortlist 2012: not just a simple case of Nobson's choice- but then I rarely agree very much with what he has to say
• while Time Magazine headlined its contribution thus Erotic Egg Whisks, Maoists and Fecal People: It Must Be The Turner Prize
• This is the result of the Guardian Poll about Who should win the Turner prize 2012? - so on that basis Paul Noble is the hot favourite

Work by the shortlisted artists will be shown in an exhibition at Tate Britain opening on 2 October 2012. The winner will be announced at Tate Britain on Monday 3 December 2010 during a live broadcast by Channel 4

Artists, Art Blogs & Articles

I've been well and truly clobbered timewise this week by efforts to reorganise my home with a view to moving to the country.  Everything is taking so much longer than anticipated.  So this is going to be a short post this week.



Botanical Art

• I went to pick up my botanical art drawing from the exhibition - only to find it had been sold.  We concluded there must have been a mishap about informing me.  Unencumbered by a piece of art, I sat in St James Park and sketched and then went and saw Lucian Freud Portraits again!

Drawing and Sketching

• Google celebrated the 54th birthday of the late Keith Haring on 4th May This is the Keith Haring Google doodle on May 4th.  Keith Haring died in 1990 at the age of 31 of AIDS-related complications.  Click the link below the image to see what information Google published.  See also the Guardian article Google Doodle celebrates Keith Haring's pop art 

Google Doodle celebrating Keith Haring's 54th birthday

Coloured pencils and pastels

• The History and Story of Unison Colour is about the history behind the development of unison pastels - which is the most popular soft pastel. Many thanks to Astrid Volquardsen (pastellbilder blog) for alerting me to the video of Kate Hersey delivering the keynote speech at last year's Ninth Convention of International Association of Pastel Societies in Albuquerque in June 2011.  

Painting and Plein Air

• Stapleton Kearns has a series of ideas about painting plein air - all are worth reviewing
• Plein Air Idea 1 - When you start a painting outside, the greatest predictor of success is previsualization.
• Plein Air Idea 2 - thumbnail things for a year or two - you'll learn a lot
• Plein Air Idea 3 - make haste slowly
• Plein Air Idea 4 - control your pixel size
• Plein Air Idea 5 - plot your large abstract design and impose the drawing from nature on that
• Plein Air Idea 6 - you can work outside longer on a painting than most people think
• Plein Air Idea 7 - Lights and Darks
• Jan Blencowe (The Poetic Landscape) writes about Change is good for an artist

Sculpture

• This is a video of the giant meccano exercise otherwise known as Constructing Anish Kapoor's Orbit: time-lapse film.  Plus this is an article which tells the story of how it came about - Anish Kapoor's Orbit tower: the mother of all helter-skelters.  I tried taking a photo of it this week while on the way to the supermarket - but I think I need to practice and find the best spot.

Art Business & Marketing

• Forbes says it knows who are the Top Ten Art Dealers in a slideshow - do you?  They also have a video about America's most powerful art dealers which explains some of the people in the slideshow plus an article called The Rise of the Super Dealer
• At Ask Harriete, Harriete Estel Berman addresses some interesting questions related to galleries - such as
• What is the first step to get my artworks shown in a gallery?
• Who is Responsible for Damage to Work On Consignment?

Many makers hold on to the fantasy that a gallery will sell all their work so they can dedicate their time to making work. The reality is that those days are gone forever

Art Collectors and Art Economy

• Yesterday I wrote about the sale last week of Edvard Munch's The Scream - The Scream - the Most Expensive Artwork Ever Sold at Auction.  
• The novelty for me is that a pastel drawing now holds this record!  Who says pastel is never taken seriously?
• Joanne Mattera (Joanne Mattera art blog)posed a question of how you would spend $120 million on art if it were handed to you in That $120 Million
• The Guardian had an article about the Top 10 most expensive works of art sold at auction - in pictures
• The value of Lucian Freud's estate has been published - but not the details of who gets what (other than that David Dawson inherits the house where Freud had his studio and a considerable sum). It would seem if you leave the Estate to your Executors you don't need to tell the world who gets what.  The value of the estate is £96 million - the largest sum ever for the estate of a British artist.

Art Competitions

• See the news at the top of this post re the announcement of the Turner Prize shortlist - each of whom now knows they will receive at least £5,000

Art Exhibitions

• Lucian Freud Portraits has broken the record for visitors to paying exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery.  More than 175,000 have been to see it since it opened three months ago.  There are extended hours to allow more people to view the exhibition in the final month.  It closes on May 26th.

Art Society Exhibitions

• The 121st Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters opened last week at the Mall Galleries and continues until 18th May.  
• On Wednesday I wrote Antony Williams wins Ondaatje Prize 2012.  
• As usual the Private View was packed - as per usual!  
• I was very happy to meet up with and have lunch with Sophie Ploeg (The Art-Ventures of Sophie Ploeg) who has a portrait in the show.  Sophie has also written a nice review with images at Royal Society of Portrait Painters
• I have more posts to come this week about the exhibition which I highly recommend - this year it's at least as good as the BP Portrait.  I can't help thinking that the digital entry has helped improve the quality of the content of the open entry.  
• To mark the Diamond Jubilee of the Queen's accession to the throne, this year there is also a mini exhibition of studies and drawings used to help create portraits of the Queen.

Royal Society of Portrait Painters - Private View

Art Galleries and Museums

• The Tate has a new website - presumably in anticipation of its new extension at Tate Modern and the hoards which will be visiting London (and Tate Modern and Tate Britain) this year.  I'll write more about it soon - there are some aspects which are worth noting.  Suffice to say it had me going round and round in circles this morning.  Not least because it seems to have consigned the whole of the history of the Turner Prize to the digital waste bin!  It's a bit much when you have to consult Wikipedia to get the list of artists who have won the Turner Prize.
• Jonathan Jones (Jonathan Jones on Art Blog) lays into the Tate Tate Britain treats our national art collection like its private plaything - and I'm right behind him in his condemnation of the curatorial decisions about what art is on display.   Tate Britain is supposted to be 'the home of British art from 1500 to the present day'.  

Tate is the custodian of a national collection of British art since 1500, whether it wants to be or not. The unique breadth of the Tate collection of British art makes it a fundamental historical resource.

Art Education

Tips and Techniques

• Two dozen tips for painterly happiness and success by Robert Genn (The Painter's Keys)
• Richard McKinley (Pastel Pointers) continues with his tips on The Two T’s of Painting | Theory and Technique, Part 3 | Points of Interest

Workshops

• The History and Story of Unison Colour also highlights the Workshops now being run by Unison Pastels 

I made this!

Art Studio

• Not exactly about a studio - more about my efforts to find a home for a huge number of art books which have been sitting in stacks everywhere around my home for far too long.  Hence a trip to IKEA and the following two posts on Making a Mark reviews...... - and then the photo of just a small percentage of the books - now with a new home
• Hemnes Bookcase x 4 for "The Art Library" #1
• Hemnes Bookcase x 4 for "The Art Library" #2 - RESULT!

Opinion Polls

• POLL: How long do you spend looking at a painting you like? is attracting a good response - see the right hand column
Prior to that I provided the results of the April Making A Mark Opinion Poll Artists - Are you an introvert or an extrovert? - in Artists are Introverts! Discuss...

Techies

• I am intensely irritated by a new trick by Blogger.  Every time I insert a link the post now jumps to the top of the post.  The "intensely irritated" feeling comes after trying to write a post like this - and any post in which I link to a lot of artist's websites!  Has anybody else noticed this problem?
• Tina Mammoser (In the Studio, On the Shore) is switching back to the old blog format she used to use after seeing what the dynamic views version looked like on a mobile device - News Blast: Changing Blog Format for Accessibility

This is from an email from Google Analytics and illustrates how art organisations can benefit from using Google Analytics

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) Masters the Art of Metrics. After installing Google Analytics and using Event Tracking for audio/video content SFMOMA could clearly see what content users liked best. Then they were able to make improvements to their website based on these insights to keep users coming back. Learn More

and finally......

Celebrity art is a funny thing.

• ArtInfo had an article about 30 Superstar Celebrity Art Collectors and the Art They Love, From Bowie's Balthus to Brangelina's Bansky
• Ever wondered what sort of art David Bowie produces?  This is the David Bowie Art website.  Apparently Bowie collects Old Masters and 20th-Century British art.