The Turner Prize
In 2006 a 29 year-old Scottish painter named Lucy McKenzie turned down the Turner prize nomination. McKenzie had worked as a porn model, and her oeuvre is sometimes sexually explicit (one painting shows her eating a bowl of soup below a framed image of a woman masturbating). The tabloids would certainly have taken an interest. According to a friend McKenzie was ”unwilling to compromise the flexible and critical dialogue around her work.”
Toma Abts, the winner of the prize is quoted as saying “My art hovers between illusion and object and it reminds you of things. I always work inside out. I know a work is finished when it is independent of me.”
Excerpted from the New Yorker, March 19th, 2007
I am seriously considering putting my name in for the Turner Prize. My world-beating artistic concept, proving me to be a genius on the level with Leonardo (Di Caprio)? I will find a large grand piano and lie inside it, closing the lid. I will be fed 24 year old malt whisky through a straw while plucking the strings inside the instrument at odd intervals in a meaningful way, emulating the best modern composers, while singing “The Strings of my Heart”. I always work inside out. I know a work is finished when I am absolutely blotto as the proverbial newt.
Note for American groupies:
Blotto = legless
Newt = an amphibian ctreature, but I know very little about it, except it drinks 24 year old malt whisky and is very funny.
P.S You will be disappointed to hear that there may not be any more postings till Saturday. No, it’s not because I intend to get drunk.