Forgive me if I find myself unable to align myself fully with either of these camps. The Tate Gallery was preparing to move its modern programming into a huge power station south of the River Thames, and its annual prize was establishing what would almost become a new academy. The Turner Prize, awarded live on the BBC after a monthslong exhibition of the nominees, helped establish the public reputations of Rachel Whiteread, Antony Gormley, Chris Ofili and (it was the ’90s) Damien Hirst — their notoriety helped along by Britain’s squalid tabloid press, which annually proclaimed that contemporary art was a sucker’s game. (The high point came in 2001, when Martin Creed took the prize for his self-descriptive installation “The Lights Going On and Off.”)The award became so visible that it spawned a number of continental imitators. Both the Prix Marcel Duchamp in France and the Preis der Nationalgalerie in Germany were responses to the Turner’s success.

Source: New York Times December 04, 2019 10:41 UTC