Turner prize- art? or just a shed?

[Rog]

Originally Posted by dubman

art is a lot of fun you guys

I know it is mate and i like lots of different art........but at the end of the day, is my garden shed at home art? No.......its a shed......is the Turner prize winner art? No its also a shed and not even as good as mine

[dubman]

yeah, but then he made it into a boat. and then built the shed where he landed.
i rather like it.

[dubman]

Originally Posted by votingfloater

If this hadn't won the Turner prize, it would have sunk without trace and there would be no discussion. If I'd encountered this project by chance, it would have done nothing for me. By your rationale, since it's the very act of giving it a prestigious but controversial award which creates the discussion, the prizegiving process is art and the shed/boat/shed is just a found object re-interpreted.

um, obviously there was discussion put into it before, as this discussion resulted in giving it the Turner prize and exposing it to those who normally wouldn't know about it.

2: newspapers aren't presented as art, even though there is an art to them

and if a prestigious award is what it takes for you to really evaluate it, then so be it. otherwise it doesnt make sense for you to feel neutral to it until an outside source forces you to really look at it.

[votingfloater]

Originally Posted by dubman

um, obviously there was discussion put into it before, as this discussion resulted in giving it the Turner prize and exposing it to those who normally wouldn't know about it.

2: newspapers aren't presented as art, even though there is an art to them

and if a prestigious award is what it takes for you to really evaluate it, then so be it. otherwise it doesnt make sense for you to feel neutral to it until an outside source forces you to really look at it.

OK, good points; I see what you're getting at. OK, it got the Turner prize - that doesn't change what I think of the piece: it still does nothing for me. I think what I'm really responding to here is other people's reactions to it and the wild claims that are made about its deeper meaning and validity.

For this to confront the issue of recycling and global warming as profoundly as the critics claims that it does, I reckon it would have to provoke a string of questions on an intellectual level or a have a strong emotional impact. Instead, all I get is, "Oh, fine very clever," and to me that is craft and skill, not art.

(The only thing it communicates to me is that this is a man prepared to go to more extraordinary lengths to get away from his wife than simply pottering about at the bottom of the garden.)

We're arguing in highly subjective territory here. You could go off and look up "art" in the Cambridge dictionary and argue that this fits the bill on each subdefinition, but I could probably provide counterexamples for each one as well.

It's fun to smack this back and forth at each other though.

[dubman]

it is, yeah

maybe because i haven't heard much of it outside this forum i still think it's a pretty good statement.
a bit simple, but effective. and it takes it away from being "merely" craft and skill.
materials have their re-uses, simply chalking it up as waste is, well... wasteful. you can use a garden shed to make yourself a boat, and it comes back to being a shed if you like, just somewhere else.

but you're talking to a dumpster diver here, so maybe i'm just excited by it.

it's so simple too. one man and a shed. and this is what he can do with just the materials he has.

[Rog]

I must confess that i've never thought about knocking down my shed, rebuilding it as a boat, paddling it down the river Severn and then rebuilding my shed......
my wife wouldn't let me! ......does this make me unartistic?

I'm sorry but i just can't see it in an artistic light. My locality is full of various sheds and lean-to's and i don't get the feeling i'm living in the middle of an outdoor Tate modern........