Rumors have circulated over the years that Nick Serota manipulates the final verdicts of the Turner Prize judges. When I mentioned this, he initially replied obliquely: “I work in a society that doesn’t value art as much as I think it should, and therefore I’ve always thought that taking a hard line about one kind of art would be destructive.” Then he added with a little irritation, “My tastes are broader than my reputation.” Serota closed his eyes to think for a rather long time before he admitted, “In the lull before the event—I won’t say storm—I begin to consider how I can orchestrate a good result, how I might put a bit of emphasis here or there to get a good conversation going to ensure that everyone who wants to say something has a chance to do so. Sometimes, when there is a deadlock, I have had to lean, because in those circumstances I don’t think we should settle on everyone’s third choice.”
This year, the judges, whose combined personal preferences will create an objective winner, include a journalist and three curators. Lynn Barber, a columnist with the Observer, is the only art world outsider. In October, two days before the exhibition opened, she published an account of her experiences as a judge in an article titled “How I Suffered for Art’s Sake.” “I hate to say it,” she wrote, “but my year as a Turner juror has seriously dampened, though I hope not extinguished, my enthusiasm for contemporary art.” Barber complained that her qualifications to be a judge were negligible, the prize’s rules were “weird,” and her judgment went “haywire.” At the same time, she asserted that while all four artists were producing “interesting work,” one of them was so “outstanding” that she “would have thought the winner was blindingly obvious.” In fact, the problem started earlier, during the process of shortlisting; Barber complained that her artist picks were so “brutally rejected” that she wondered whether she had been chosen merely as a “fig leaf” to cover the machinations of the art world.
The Tate’s officials were privately furious. “Lynn’s article will make it more difficult for the jury to work together,” admitted Serota. “In the past, people have been able to speak their mind feeling pretty confident that what they say will not be written down and used in evidence against them.” One of Barber’s accusations was that the jury didn’t seriously consider nominations from the public. Serota disagreed. “The jury do take those nominations seriously.” He raised his eyebrows and chortled silently. “But not to the point of doing deep investigations into an artist who has shown once in Scunthorpe!”
The other judges were dismayed as well. One of them, Andrew Renton, who runs the curating program at Goldsmiths and also manages a private contemporary art collection, told me, “I fear that she has shot her load. She has sidelined herself as a judge by going public before we’ve finished the process.” Renton also said that Barber’s inexperience had led her to put forth nominations that the others felt were “beyond premature.” The Turner Prize, like any award that aims to stand for something coherent, needs to be conferred at the right time. As Renton explained, “To give the Turner nomination to someone who is straight out of art school is utterly irresponsible. By the same token, it shouldn’t become a midlife-crisis prize.” The Turner Prize honors artists on the cusp between what the art world would call “late emergent” and “early midcareer.” Lifetime achievement awards present little drama, as they can’t go seriously wrong, whereas prizes that recognize promise in very young artists offer less excitement because the stakes are so small.
Renton hadn’t made up his mind who should win. “The greatest critical work in my mind is the Talmud,” he said. “It’s one argument superseding another—an ongoing, open-ended dialogue that allows multiple points of view. For me, that is what art is about.” Conflicts of perspective may enlighten, but conflicts of interest can confuse. In overseeing a private art collection, Renton buys art on a weekly basis. “We were probably the first real supporters of Rebecca’s sculpture. We also own several videos by Phil Collins, and we’ve just bought a Titchner piece. The only artist we don’t own is Tomma Abts.” Renton continued, “The more qualified a person is to be a judge, the more conflict there is going to be…Still, I have to be more kosher than kosher. In the jury room, my agenda is transparent. I’m disempowered.”
Margot Heller, another judge, is the director of the South London Gallery, a public space with a strong track record for showing young artists who go on to receive Turner Prize nominations. Like many who devote themselves to the discreet, elite world of art, Heller is mediaphobic, but she tried hard to open up, as if using the occasion of my visit as a free trial of aversion therapy. “I have heard many people asserting, with absolute conviction, that so-and-so will win,” she managed. “But I’m a judge and I honestly don’t know who the winner will be.” When I met her in her white office, Heller was dressed in a white shirt buttoned up to the collar. “I don’t think there is such a thing as the four most outstanding artists,” she said with an anxious glance at my digital recorder. “It is a group decision. I am genuinely happy with the four we chose, but it’s not the same as if you asked me alone to come up with a shortlist.”
The fourth judge is Matthew Higgs, the director of White Columns, the oldest artist-led exhibition space in New York. I met Higgs in his closetlike office surrounded by piles of bubble-wrapped artworks by disabled artists. Higgs trained as an artist and still makes his own art, such as found and framed book pages that bear titles like Not Worth Reading and Art Isn’t Easy. I’d heard that he had the ability to sway a jury and could be “ruthless in his dismissal and superbly articulate in his advocacy.” When I mentioned this, Higgs peered at me through his Buddy Holly glasses and said, “I wouldn’t damn anything. I support things that I believe in, and I believe in a lot of things.” Although he said he admired the prize’s role in democratizing art, he thought it was a shame that “quiet, sensitive work often gets drowned out, while flashy, photogenic work becomes mythic noise around the show.” Was this a hint? Higgs gave a further indication of whom he might support in the jury room when he explained what makes a great work of art: “It’s not about innovation for innovation’s sake or the ambition to be novel or unique. All good art gives us an opportunity for a different relationship with time.” To this, Higgs added in a barely audible mumble, “It’s usually about an individual’s radically idiosyncratic interpretation of the world. We’re inherently fascinated by work like that because we’re inherently fascinated by other people.”
With a week to go before the awards ceremony, Phil Collins hosted a press conference at a shabby gilt-and-mirrors hall in Piccadilly. As part of his piece return of the real, he invited a panel of nine people who had appeared on reality television programs to tell their stories to an audience of journalists, including Lynn Barber. One young man spoke about how humiliated he had been when he went to Ibiza as part of a reality TV competition to see who could date Miriam, only to learn that Miriam was a pre-op transsexual. Barber heckled from the audience: “What did you think you were doing?” Collins, undaunted by her power over his fate, told her to shut up.
After the panelists had spoken, the conference opened up to questions. Collins walked around the room with a cordless microphone in hand, acting the breezy part of a professional talk-show host but intermittently indulging in startlingly “unprofessional” habits. He slumped, looked at his feet, chewed his lip, and scratched his cheek with the mike.
“Nicholas!” he barked, nodding at Nicholas Glass, the arts correspondent for Channel 4 News. Glass asked the group how they felt about being part of an artwork.
“I like to make an exhibition of myself,” answered a woman who had suffered through medical complications on Brand New You, a cosmetic surgery show.
“Art is like having a conversation. This work is very interactive,” said a man who had been blamed for his autistic son’s bad behavior on The Teen Tamer.
“It’s what the Turner Prize is all about,” said the man who had tried to date Miriam.
A TV reporter from Germany had a q
uestion for Collins. “Is this project really art?” she asked.
Collins stared into her camera and said, “If this work isn’t art, then I have to ask you, is this news?”
The cameraman swung his head out from behind his equipment. “We can’t use that!” he exclaimed.
Indeed, Collins’s work doesn’t look like art. After the media left, I asked him why. First, he wants his work to “sit close to the thing it is critiquing, so sometimes the aesthetic dimension is willfully pared down.” Second, he asserted that the best works are the ones that least confirm your expectations: “It is amazing when you can’t believe what you are seeing. I hold out for those moments. The unsettling nature of art is, for me, its deepest attraction.”
Three days later, on the Saturday night before the awards ceremony, Channel 4 broadcast The Turner Prize Challenge, a half-hour reality TV program produced by the Tate, in which four contestants—two students, one accountant, and an art teacher—competed against one another to explain the work of the four nominated artists to the general public. The contestants had been winnowed from several hundred “screen tests”—videotaped comments that visitors had made in the Turner Prize Video Booth at the museum. (The Tate sees itself as a “content-rich organization.” It has a comprehensive media facility, with in-house editing suites and camera crews who are “out shooting all the time.”) In this program, one of the contestants explained that in the course of her art appreciation “journey,” she had learned that art should not “just please the eye” but “rip open your mindset.” The winner, Miriam Lloyd-Evans, was a full-lipped twenty-one-year-old art history student. She clinched her victory by calling Collins’s reality TV victim hotline to ask if he wanted to hear about her experiences in making The Turner Prize Challenge.
Serota and his jury have been sitting in the vaulted boardroom, trying to determine a winner, for three hours. Four white tables are arranged to form a large square, evenly surrounded by sixteen chairs. Serota has a side to himself. His back faces the only window in the room, which looks out over the muddy Thames. When they first sat down, the art world judges—Renton, Heller, and Higgs—sat in a row across from him, while Lynn Barber sat in isolation on the left. But Serota and Renton made eye contact, and then Renton stood up and moved to the chair next to Barber’s. Barber took this gesture as an opportunity to apologize for her indiscretion and promised not to write about the final deliberations. The jury watched the three-minute interviews with the artists filmed by Tate Media, and the conversation began.
The judges were initially divided, but early in the meeting, three out of four came out in favor of the same two artists. No one made an issue of either artistic medium or gender. Pros and cons accumulated. They talked a lot about relevance and timing. Every statement seemed to change the lay of the land. If Serota had a favorite, no one knew who it was. Just after 1 P.M. they thought that they had agreed on a winner, and they adjourned to reflect on their decision over salad in the room next door. Then they went back in the boardroom, confirmed their verdict, and discussed what should go in the press release. By two o’clock their job was done.
As he is pulling away from Tate Britain, Andrew Renton calls me from his “espresso black” Saab convertible. “It was very hard work, very intense, but we have a decision!” he says with a slightly hysterical laugh. “There were no fisticuffs—just a fantastic articulation of the merits of all four. It was astonishingly grown-up.” Renton pauses. His indicator clicks loudly as he makes a difficult turn. “All I can say is, the exhibition does make a difference. It is the last hurdle.” Honking and what must be the low roar of a double-decker bus ensue. Renton mutters “Crikey,” then directs his voice back to the phone. “There was an internal logic to the decision,” he says. “It had to be, in the end.”
The Turner Prize has a reputation for being a reliable indicator of an artist’s ability to sustain a vibrant art practice over the long term, but perhaps it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The personal confidence gained from being nominated can galvanize an artist’s ambitions, while the museum’s public endorsement leads to further exhibition opportunities. Nevertheless, the jury can’t pick just anyone; if they can’t choose the best artist, then they at least need to plump for the right artist. In the course of researching the prize, I’ve experienced a similar chicken-and-egg confusion about the prize’s ability to reflect or create a defining sense of the moment. It finally hits me that it’s vital for the prize to do both.
At 5:30 P.M., a little over an hour before the award party is due to begin, Tate Britain’s blockbuster Old Master show “Holbein in England” (a reminder of just how long London has been attracting international artists) is still heaving with visitors. Upstairs, the Duveen Galleries have been transformed into what looks like a swanky nightclub with purple lights and black leather couches. In a side gallery that’s zoned off for the caterers, the cooks are putting the finishing touches on the canapés. In another alcove, a DJ is setting up his decks. At the far end, set between four giant golden stone columns, is a chrome podium where the Channel 4 News crew is doing a sound check.
Nicholas Glass looks into a camera and says in a deep, smooth voice, “We are all waiting with bated breath for four people to be put out of their misery. They’ve been waiting. We’ve been waiting. And the waiting is just about to be over. Yoko Ono is in the wings. Nick Serota is mounting the podium. Here he comes. Over to Nick.” Glass smiles and lowers the microphone. “Of course, I won’t say that exactly,” he says. “We’ve got six minutes live at the end of the news. After the speeches, we’ll show a clip about the winner’s work, then I’ll ask the winner three questions and hope that he or she will say something, anything, before a voice in my ear says, ‘Okay, wind it up.’”
Glass talks in discrete sound bites. “Serota is absolutely professional. He’ll get on and off the stage quickly.” He stops, smiles. “It’s the interview with the shell-shocked artist that makes me slightly anxious. Depending on who wins, it could be a very awkward television moment. But people love that. If the winner has nothing to say, they will enjoy my discomfort.” He pauses, smiles again. “I will probably have had a drink or two by that time, as, I hope, will they. It’s easy to fuck up, but I am old enough not to care.” The seven o’clock Channel 4 news is one of few hour-long news programs on British television, and even though Glass has the luxury of six minutes rather than other newscasters’ two and a half, he admits, “There is no time to be profound. It is like a football event, where you can share people’s anxiety about who is going to win, then take pleasure in someone’s euphoria at the end of the game.”
Over Glass’s shoulder, Yoko Ono is slowly mounting the steps of the podium. She wears trousers, a top hat, and Lennon sunglasses. She adjusts the microphone down to her height and says, “In 1966, I was in New York, I received an invite from London, and made a journey across the water. It…changed my life forever.” Her voice betrays her Japanese roots. “In those days New York was the center of the art world. Now it’s London.” She reads the words ardently, as if she were reciting a poem. “Artists’ power can affect the world…” Her voice rings through the cavernous gallery. “I am happy to open the gate of acceptance by the institution of art to another young artist…And the 2006 Turner Prize goes to…” She stops. Her envelope is empty. It is just a rehearsal.
I make a beeline to the spot where her entourage has set up camp. “The spirit of art is to express the truth,” she tells me tenderly. “Politicians are too involved in red tape to be human. Artists are freer to express themselves, but if we self-censor ourselves to accommodate the monetary world, we destroy the purity of art.” I wonder how she feels about the competitive aspect of the Turner. “I feel bad in having to announce one winner, but I think that just being a candidate has made a big difference to the lives of all four. Sectors of the peace industry are always criticizing each other, but the war industry is so united. We need to respect each other’s position. It is great that art is flourishing.�
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At 6:45 P.M. the doors open and the crowd flows past security, into the hall where waiters stand with trays of cocktails provided by Gordon’s Gin, the prize’s sponsor. Among the throng are a number of past winners: Rachel Whiteread (1993), Wolfgang Tillmans (2000), Martin Creed (2001), Keith Tyson (2002), Grayson Perry in a prim black rubber dress (2003), and Jeremy Deller (2004).
Since his win, Grayson Perry has become one of Britain’s most famous artists, and in addition to his art practice, he has written a weekly column for the Times. “Rather than carrying on being the subject of the media, I elected to become a member of it,” he explains with a swing of his handbag and a glance at his wife. “In the art world there is a snobbery which suggests that the artist is meant to be a shadowy figure in the background behind the work. That kind of high-integrity marketing strategy is very common. Whether people call it a marketing strategy or integrity is another matter.” Perry stops to be adored by a trio of female fans, then continues. “The monk-artist is an attractive archetype in a world where there are only so many—the belligerent drunk, the batty dame, the flaming tortured soul. It’s a big part of the attraction of art—the work as a relic of the artist/saint/holy fool. People want to touch the cloth or whatever. It’s part of the religion.”
Charlotte Higgins, the arts correspondent of the Guardian, has already submitted her copy. “For the first edition, you can submit as late as eight o’clock,” she says, “but it’s heavily frowned upon—an emergency measure, reserved for death and disaster. My editor is usually on my tail by six.” Higgins writes four thousand words and files around five stories in an average week. “Every year I put in a call to the one press officer who knows who has won at around four o’clock, whip up six hundred and fifty words by six, then throw on a clean frock and rush down here.” She glances at the time on her BlackBerry. “After the press conference, I’ll call in a few tidbits and a decent quote for the third edition. Now I long for something jolly to happen—a nice bit of chaos or contention.” Higgins scans the crowd and giggles. “It all looks slightly comedic when you already know the result.”
Seven Days in the Art World Page 13