Turner prize- art? or just a shed?

[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.