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.

The Scream - the Most Expensive Artwork Ever Sold at Auction

There are four versions of The Scream by Edward Munch (1863-1944). The most colourful one - a work done in pastel - sold at Sotheby's Auction House in New York last week for the largest sum ever taken for one painting at auction.

The Scream being sold at auction at Sotheby's in New York for $107 million
(excluding buyer's premium)
Photo courtesy of Sotheby's

I wonder how many of us would ever have thought a work in pastel would set a significant auction record?

However it's an iconic painting.

Few images have burnt themselves on our collective retina as the Scream has
Simon Shaw, Head of Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art, New York

The four versions of The Scream are:

The History and Story of Unison Colour

Unison Colour website

I'm a massive fan of Unison Colour - Soft Pastels - as are many other Pastel Artists.  They rate as the most popular soft pastel every time I run a poll.

Below is a 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.  She's talking about her late husband John Hersey and the history behind the development of Unison Pastels.  Plus an account of how they are made today.

It's an amazingly vivid account with some stunning images of the process of making the pastels and the staff involved.  If you use Unison Pastels, as I do, this is a video which I guarantee you will very much enjoy watching.



Thanks to Astrid Volquardsen (Astrid Volquardsen pastellbilder) for kindly sending me the link.

Unison Workshops in 2012

Unison have also started to hold workshops in Northumberland - these are the ones for 2012 - which start tomorrow!

• May 5th  Jenny Purrett "Lines in the Landscape" 
• June 23rd Ann Oram "Still Life and the Garden" 
• July21st/22nd Angela A'Court "Flowers with pastel" 
• August 25th Peter Podmore "The Northumbrian Landscape" 
• September 29th Clare Money "Bastles with pastels"

If you're a pastel artist you may find my "resources for artists" sites below to be of interest.  One of them is devoted to Unison Pastels

• Unison Pastels - Resources for Artists
• Pastels - Resources for Artists
• Pastel Societies - Resources for Artists

Antony Williams wins Ondaatje Prize 2012

Winner of the £10,000 Ondaatje Prize and Gold Medal of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters
Rt. Hon Margaret Beckett MP by Antony Williams RP PS NEAC
egg tempera, 137 x 111cm (54 x 43 inches)

© Antony Williams

The Ondaatje Prize

Today, at the 121st Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters Antony Williams's marvellous egg tempera painting of Margaret Beckett won the £10,000 Ondaatje Prize and another gold medal - for the most distinguished portrait in the exhibition.

Just over a month ago I wrote Antony Williams wins Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize 2012 on this blog.  That won a £15,000 prize and a gold medal.

So I declare Antony Williams an Olympian painter in this Olympics year - two gold medals under his belt in just over a month is some feat in the painting world.  I'm sure the £25,000 ($40,000+) will also come in handy!

Rt. Hon Margaret Beckett MP (crop)
by Antony Williams RP PS NEAC
egg tempera

© Antony Williams

To my mind the prize is amply justified - the painting is stunning and his skills in observation and painting in egg tempera are exemplary.  It's a fabulous painting - huge attention to detail but also to humanity and character.

For those not familiar with egg tempera this painting is created from a huge number of individual brush marks which are all individually delineated in the painting.  You can see precisely how it builds up to the whole.

I was able to have a brief interview with Antony and asked him about his recent successes, his approach to painting and whether he had any tips for success for those portrait painters who are starting out.

Tips for aspiring portrait painters

Antony works in egg tempera in natural light.  He buys his pigments from L Cornelissen & Son and then mixes it with egg yolk to create his egg tempera paint.

In terms of tips for aspiring portrait painters

• Antony finds that working on about 4-5 paintings at any one time suits him best.  Each gets about a day a week.  That way he remains engaged with the work and doesn't get bored.  Sometimes he has to work to a deadline and then it can get quite bit intense as he works more on just one painting - as he had to do with the portrait of Margaret Beckett.
• He recommends checking out who is on this year's panel of judges of an art competition this year and whether they seem likely to be sympathetic to your work
• It's not his practice to paint for a competition although he knows some artists do.  He enters whatever is available at the time - and then it's down to the selectors.  Interestingly he regards his recent win of the Lynn Painter Stainer Prize as entirely accidental! He only entered because one of his models was entering.
• Perseverance as a quality and and intense observation as a skill are both attributes that portrait painters need to develop.  Portrait painting is hard work and you need to keep going!

I'll be writing about the Annual Exhibition tomorrow.  Suffice to say for now that competition for a place on the wall was intense and I highly recommend visiting the exhibition.

The exhibition runs until 18th May at the Mall Galleries just off Trafalgar Square.

The winners of other prizes at the exhibition are detailed below.

POLL: How long do you spend looking at a painting you like?

How long do you spend looking at a painting you like? is the topic for The Making A Mark Poll for May 2012.

Looking at art: studying Gustave Courbet's "L'Atelier du Peintre" (1855)
("The Studio of the Painter")
in the Musee d'Orsay 
 photo: Katherine Tyrrell (2009) - all rights reserved

I spend a lot of time visiting exhibitions and looking at paintings.  I've worked out a way of being able to see what I want to see:

• quick tour of the exhibition - to see what's there and what catches my eye.  
• second tour - this time paying close attention to work which won prizes and work which catches my eye
• third quick tour at the end - just to make sure I didn't miss anything!

If I'm going through a very large art gallery or museum, then I slow right down and look at the art I want to see in a much more considered way, if I'm only passing by once.

How long do people spend looking at art these days?  Less than five seconds according to a Daily Mail experiment (see We know what we like, and it's not modern art! How gallery visitors only viewed work by Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin for less than 5 seconds).  This measured the time people looked at different paintings and concluded that contemporary art held less appeal for people visiting Tate Britain.

Damien Hirst Room: by damien hirst
TOTAL VIEWERS: 478 AVERAGE DWELL TIME: 38 seconds LONGEST LOOK: 4 minutes
Daily Mail

There again - How long does it take to look at a painting? asks James Elkins, Art critic and historian, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

An elderly woman told she came to see one of the Art Institute's Rembrandt paintings -- a curious picture of a young woman, leaning on the bottom half of a Dutch door -- three or four times a week during her lunch hour. How long had she done that? I asked. She said, "I don't know. Decades."

How about you?  More particularly, if we ignore all the art that doesn't take your fancy - how long do you generally spend looking at art you like?

The options in this month's Making A Mark Opinion Poll are:

• Less than 15 seconds
• Less than a minute
• 1-2 minutes
• 2-5 minutes
• 5-10 minutes
• Periodic visits
• Frequent repeat visits

You can find the poll just below the flame icon in the right hand column. It will finish at the end of the month and the poll results should be posted the same day.

See more Making A Mark Polls summarised on The Making A Mark Poll - Resources for Artists