Creed, Bacon and the Turner Prize at Tate Britain
Before catching the train back to Edinburgh, I went off to Tate Britain. Mostly, I wanted to see Martin Creed’s Work No. 850, but whilst there I thought I’d catch the Bacon retrospective and see the works shortlisted for the Turner Prize, too; and make the use of my new Tate membership…
I was expecting to really dislike Work No. 850, if only because it is not what I would normally consider “art”: it basically consists of people running through the main hall of Tate Britain. One after another. Not painting; not sculpture; not even an unmade bed: but people in running gear, running through an otherwise empty gallery?
So what, strictly, is the art? Is it the individual runners? Not really, they’re athletes. Is it the gallery space? Well, that was there before and will be there after the work finishes. (I was going to write “is taken away”, but of course, the work leaves the gallery every night!) So it must be the idea: the concept.
And the art… Is it just when the runners are running? Or is it also between those periods, when the gallery is quiet and empty; or is it both?
So - like I say, I was expecting not to like this, not to find this interesting, not to be engaged at all.
How wrong I was. I stilldon’t know whether is art or not, but I found this piece fascinating, and enthralling. I spent a long time watching the runners speed through the gallery, avoiding visitors (is that part of the art?). The presence and absence of the runners was really interesting, and it clearly got me thinking; and it made me look at the gallery in a different way, which is always healthy.
And I was standing there, taking photographs: was I part of the art, too?
The Bacon retrospective - well, I found these works hard to take: Bacon pictured people as meat. They are powerful images, but (to me) essentially unpleasant: they aren’t pictures I want to linger in front of, I don’t want to explore them - I want to turn my head and leave. They have the feel of horror movies to me - a slasher film, the flesh cut up in front of your face: so much meat and blood, faceless and screaming (if that is possible); or Alien, all distorted bodies, skinned and bleeding.
That is of course probably what Bacon was after: the everyday pain of the human condition. He succeeded, but I don’t necessarily like the effect. I see no beauty in what he created - just horror and pain. I do think some of them are brilliant - the “screaming popes” series; but…
I didn’t linger.
(Many years ago, I met Bacon. I think it was at the French Pub - the York Minster, in Dean Street - but might have been somewhere else. I was with my father. I was about fourteen. I collected signatures then, and when my father introduced me to Bacon, I asked for his autograph. He was very drunk; it took him about ten minutes before he could remember how to spell his name, and even then, it came out as a scrawl. Somewhere I must still have my autograph book.)
The exhibition of the Turner shortlisted artists was - oh fuck, they were awful. There was nothing to like, as far as I was concerned. Nothing interesting at all. I walked from room to room thinking “So what? Show me something! Make me think!” I mean, I am interested in all this stuff: jeez, if I can get excited by a bunch of people running through a hall and call it art, the top artists in the country should be able to move me! But they couldn’t at all. I was so deeply unimpressed, I went back to watch the runners again.
They must have thought I was a bit weird, watching them chase through the hall for so long. They didn’t interact with the other people in the hall at all - there was a very neat swerve by one woman as she stepped to one side to avoid a toddler who decided to toddle into her thundering path.
Maybe that was part of the art, too.
I was expecting to really dislike Work No. 850, if only because it is not what I would normally consider “art”: it basically consists of people running through the main hall of Tate Britain. One after another. Not painting; not sculpture; not even an unmade bed: but people in running gear, running through an otherwise empty gallery?
So what, strictly, is the art? Is it the individual runners? Not really, they’re athletes. Is it the gallery space? Well, that was there before and will be there after the work finishes. (I was going to write “is taken away”, but of course, the work leaves the gallery every night!) So it must be the idea: the concept.
And the art… Is it just when the runners are running? Or is it also between those periods, when the gallery is quiet and empty; or is it both?
So - like I say, I was expecting not to like this, not to find this interesting, not to be engaged at all.
How wrong I was. I stilldon’t know whether is art or not, but I found this piece fascinating, and enthralling. I spent a long time watching the runners speed through the gallery, avoiding visitors (is that part of the art?). The presence and absence of the runners was really interesting, and it clearly got me thinking; and it made me look at the gallery in a different way, which is always healthy.
And I was standing there, taking photographs: was I part of the art, too?
The Bacon retrospective - well, I found these works hard to take: Bacon pictured people as meat. They are powerful images, but (to me) essentially unpleasant: they aren’t pictures I want to linger in front of, I don’t want to explore them - I want to turn my head and leave. They have the feel of horror movies to me - a slasher film, the flesh cut up in front of your face: so much meat and blood, faceless and screaming (if that is possible); or Alien, all distorted bodies, skinned and bleeding.
That is of course probably what Bacon was after: the everyday pain of the human condition. He succeeded, but I don’t necessarily like the effect. I see no beauty in what he created - just horror and pain. I do think some of them are brilliant - the “screaming popes” series; but…
I didn’t linger.
(Many years ago, I met Bacon. I think it was at the French Pub - the York Minster, in Dean Street - but might have been somewhere else. I was with my father. I was about fourteen. I collected signatures then, and when my father introduced me to Bacon, I asked for his autograph. He was very drunk; it took him about ten minutes before he could remember how to spell his name, and even then, it came out as a scrawl. Somewhere I must still have my autograph book.)
The exhibition of the Turner shortlisted artists was - oh fuck, they were awful. There was nothing to like, as far as I was concerned. Nothing interesting at all. I walked from room to room thinking “So what? Show me something! Make me think!” I mean, I am interested in all this stuff: jeez, if I can get excited by a bunch of people running through a hall and call it art, the top artists in the country should be able to move me! But they couldn’t at all. I was so deeply unimpressed, I went back to watch the runners again.
They must have thought I was a bit weird, watching them chase through the hall for so long. They didn’t interact with the other people in the hall at all - there was a very neat swerve by one woman as she stepped to one side to avoid a toddler who decided to toddle into her thundering path.
Maybe that was part of the art, too.