The Not So Controversial Turner Prize 2009 Winner

The anticipated Turner Prize was awarded this week in the UK. For those of you not quite familiar with the prize, the Turner Prize for visual arts is a yearly award presented to a visual artist (it has been given to painters in the past, but it is usually associated with visual media) under the age of 50. The award is presented to the best piece of art work exhibited at the Tate Gallery during its annual Turner Prize exhibit.

Named after the controversial romantic landscape painter J.M.W. Turner, the prize has often lived up to it's infamous namesake. Although widely recognized as one of the greatest masters if British watercolor, Turner's provocative paintings fused elements of humanism and it's vulnerable and vulgar sublimity in natural world.

In Hannibal Crossing the Alps, this distinctive juxtaposition is clearly intended:



With this in mind it is no wonder that work as complex and provocative like the emotional sculptures (the one below is called "Virgin Mother") of Damien Hirst who was a winner in 1995 are just the type of work that Turner Prize winners often exhibit.


Hirst gained notoriety with his now equally infamous formaldehyde Shark that was exhibited at the Met a few years back, which was the winning piece in Hirst's repertoire.



Equally provocative was Tracy Emin's "My Bed" piece, exhibited at the Tate gallery in 1999 and also on the short list for the Turner. The work gained much media noteriety due to the presence of the bodily secretions in the bedsheets as well as items with other objects equally provocative ( undewear with menstrual blood, used condoms, etc). Although it did not win the prize it is representative of work constantly evaluated as a potential winner.




This year's winner is Richard Wright, who won the Prize with a gold fresco presented at the Turner exhibit as one of the official entries vying for the prize. The Guardian has published this article of the winner and his winning piece. The golden leaf fresco below was this year's winner. Sometimes the classics never runs out of style.

Suburban Sexuality in the work of Eric Fischl

My very good friend Melissa, who is an industrial design major at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn is a very reliable source to get your art right. Not because she is a connoisseur snob who would use the term avant garde like it was going out of style but rather because when you talk about art with her, she talks it how she sees it. Yesterday when I was trying to persuade her into writing a weekly post on art and design (her initial response was "I can't promise I'll do it every week") she texted me with a very interesting painter by the name of Eric Fischl, who is an American painter and sculpturer, considered by some as the godfather of modern realism.

Being the amateur aficionado of art that I am, I asked her what she liked about Fischl's work and her response was exactly what the non cognoscenti like myself want to hear; he's a realist painter with a Freudian complex. So I went "lurking" around the interweb in search of Eric Fischl and what I found fit exactly into the description of Melissa. Here is one of Fischl's famous painting entitled "Sleep Walking":



In this painting a young pubescent boy seems to be masturbating into a kiddie pool. It seems interesting to me the depiction of this act in such a strong manner, since it is Fischl's intent to provoke indignation at seeing what otherwise is an act that is common in sexuality. "The intention of Sleepwalker was not to offend but to shock an audience. Society weren’t so much shocked by the act of masturbation but rather the fact that it had been made public" wrote one critic. Interestenly so, the boy in this scene is somewhat unaware that he is being watched, either by us or perhaps by the voyeuristic Fischl. The shadow in the pool is perhaps the only indication that there are highlights set up for an act that this boy intended to be done at night and alone.

This cosmos of sexuality, voyeurism and emotional reaction seems to be the signature of Fischl's work. His depiction of everyday people in normal but not talked about situation often weight on issues concerning moral questions and psychodramatic reactions. Here is one of his famous and controversial pieces entitled "Bad Boy"



The setting again seems brilliant: this private/intimate moment, broken again by the voyeuristic. The light emanating quietly through the blinds. Has the young boy also stumbled unknowingly into this woman's room, just like the lights and the viewers are stumbling into this very same scene? Or he is also participating, suggestively like the fruits on the table? "He paints these great scenes that make you question what is really going on" said Melissa. Is this a painting about the loss of innocence or of the often private and exciting encounters with sexuality like in "Sleep Walking"? Crude or just normal? Human sexuality is the rawest of human needs anyway and at the end we are all active participants in its menage.

P.S. I will try to convince Melissa to write this post herself next Tuesday and later this week a post about Art Basel.