ARTS // COMMENT
Art and politics, win or lose
Are the politics of art threatening to disrupt sponsorship and competitiveness? John Renwick judges the judges
Image: © Stephen White
A
ll four artists shortlisted for the 2019 Turner Prize were named joint winners after they collectively argued that the judges should recognise the causes of “commonality, multiplicity and solidarity”. Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock, Oscar Murillo and Tai Shani proposed that the subjects of their works, on themes of migration, patriarchy, torture and civil rights, should not be pitted against each other by the judges. Is this a beneficial stance for the arts? Sunday Times art critic Waldemar Januszczak, while praising the themes of the works, wrote: “The use of the Turner as a propaganda vehicle for ultraLondony evening-class lectures has become seriously off-putting. People don’t go to art to be turned into better citizens. They go to art to have their eyes pleasured and their hearts touched.” There is some precedent for this mutuality Helen Martin and Theaster Gates have shared their prizes from the Turner, Hepworth and Arts Mundi awards with other nominees and in October, th judges of a major UK literary award, the Booker Prize, were widely criticized when for the first time the prize was awarded not to one winner, but two: Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments and Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other. So is it now politically unacceptable to choose a competition winner? Do we have to judge a work of art by its theme, rather than on its own artistic merits? Surely while accepting that each work dealt with an important issue, the judges in these cases could have decided which did the best job? Should art be like a non-competitive school sports day where everyone gets a prize regardless of their ability? Who would want to sponsor a competition in which there is no winner? The issue might not matter if it weren’t for the fact that art is suffering crises both of financing and of conscience. Government funding is being
cut while institutions such as the Natural History Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art and J Paul Getty Trust are being asked difficult questions about their founders’ associations with slavery, misappropriation and ruthless business practices. Arts sponsorship by big business is being challenged by protestors; both British and American arts institutions have severed their associations with ‘big pharma’ including the Sackler company, and actor Mark Rylance has resigned from the Royal Shakespeare Company over its sponsorship by oil giant BP. The Natural History Museum and National Portrait Gallery have experienced action by climate change protesters over their financial connections with petroleum companies. But as Hugh Eakin points out, writing in the Washington Post, where else can museums and galleries expect to get their money? He quotes
a 2018 survey by the American Association of Art Museum Directors showing that the largest museums spend an average of $63 per visitor, while receiving only $13 in revenue. “At the same time”, says Eakin, “museums have been virtually priced out of the art market. They depend on gifts from top collectors, which account for three-quarters of today’s acquisitions.” In the UK, government cuts in the public Art Fund will require more, not less, reliance on wealthy corporations and private donors. So where does all this leave the issues of competition and sponsorship? Probably in need of new approaches to funding and promoting the arts. If life is a competition, surely there must be winners and losers... (Below) Oscar Murillo, Collective Conscience, 2019 Turner Prize winner. Photo: Stephen White
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06/12/2019 11:50