Turner Prize

[angeldraws]

Can anyone tell me what the Turner Prize is usually awarded for and why it is unusual for it to be awarded to a painter/artist?? TIA (Also in HOW IT WORKS section)

[LazyGun]

The Turner Prize has always been controversial, since it a prize for contemporary art.

Many of the prizes have been sculptures, or "concepts" which have provoked a great deal of debate about what actually constitutes art.

It has been a good few years since a painter (or painting) won.

[~ vortex ~]

Hope this helps to explain ☺
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turner_prize

[jno]

People think it particularly odd as Turner himself was a painter; giving the prize to conceptual artists suggests modern artists simply don't have the skills he had and giving it to them demeans his name, according to this line of thinking. But they can award it for any sort of art they like.

[flip-flop]

'Conceptual' art is an excuse for the talentless to pass off absolute bloody rubbish as 'art' and fool people into beliveing it is a work of importance.

Blu-tac thumbed to a wall being being the most absurd of recent years.

It is the Emperor's New Clothes

[NH]

The biggest joke about "conceptual" art is that it's a genre with no underlying concepts. To generalise, Classical art was always about still life, moving life, Bible scenes etc. Impressionism was the same but blurrier. Surrealism and Abstract Art are all about the workings of the human mind. Pop Art is designed to reflect popular culture. And Conceptualism? Any ******** you like. Without discipline and without framework, you can't claim to be an artist.

The Turner Prize is awarded for completely repudiating Turner's legacy and flicking the V at society in general and calling it art. To award it to a painter is unusual because it's a wee bit more difficult to do it through that medium.