Turner Prize 2008
“If you’re working as an artist nowadays the worst place to be in terms of critics is Britain… You go elsewhere, you go to America, you go to Europe, then you get a fair reception. People look at your work and actually try to understand it,” the artist Mark Leckey told Channel 4’s Nicholas Glass on Monday, immediately after winning the Turner Prize.
Nevertheless, this year there was little of the ‘Is this Art?’ style criticism usually associated with the Prize in the arts press, although The Daily Telegraph did wheel out Sister Wendy.
Rather, the critical consensus was largely one of indifference: “It didn’t start any fires” and “bland”, were common criticisms of the four nominees, seen to be rehashing stale ideas (see Cathy Wilkes’s jumble of ‘ready-mades’), rather than offending the nation. Further, the art world seems to seek actively not to be understood; Leckey himself described his desire for a “cultish practice“, in a “cosseted” art world.
In her show, nominee Goshka Macuga took on the role of curator, re-arranging photographs from the Tate archives; Mark Leckey presented a video of one of his lectures, in which he is both curator and critic. This new autonomy of artistic practice can be baffling to the outsider. The impenetrable jargon of the Tate curators only went to enhance this sense of an exclusive, closed-off art world.
Having now won the Prize, Leckey may want to broaden his horizons. The 1999 Turner Prize winner, Steve McQueen, carried off three awards at the British Independent Film Awards (Bifas) for his film Hunger. Best Film went to Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle’s film about a Mumbai street child.
Golden Revolution
1 January, 1959: the puppet dictator Fulgencio Batista flees Cuba for the Dominican Republic; after six years of struggle, and four hiding out in the Sierra Maestra, the island belongs to the Cuban Revolutionaries… The photography agency Magnum have decided to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of this event with a “Permanent Revolution Season“. Wednesday saw the opening of an exhibition documenting the agency’s long engagement with Cuba, from Rene Burri’s iconic image of Ernesto “Che” Guevara, to the portrayal of life today in Castro’s Cuba. They will also be a screening both installments of Steven Soderbergh’s two-part film about Che Guevara on 1 January at Curzon Soho, Curzon Richmond and the Renoir Cinema. (The official release date is 2 January, Che: Guerrilla comes out on 20th February).
Both “Che” films will be shown in Havana this weekend, as part of the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema. Benicio del Toro, who plays Che in the film, will be there, as will Rodrigo Santoro, the Brasilian actor who plays Raul Castro. He may even meet the man himself, and it would be interesting to see how the Castro brothers receive an American film about the figure they turned into the poster boy of the Revolution. The President of the Film Festival, Alfredo Guevara, spoke positively of US President-elect Barack Obama in his inaugural speech on Tuesday. Two weeks after the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, Obama will assume the Presidency: might we see a change to the deadlock of US-Cuban relations?
Bombs over Bollywood
Mumbai is not just the financial centre of India, it also hosts the nexus of film, music, celebrity, gossip and fashion that goes by the name of Bollywood. The terrorist attacks have had their effect there, too. Cancelled film releases, ruined parties, closed cinemas and postponed weddings have gone alongside the more serious consequences of the bombings and shootings.
The actor Amitabh Bachchan, revered demi-God of Hindi film, wrote extensively on his “Big B Blog” in response to the attacks, revealing that he now slept with a loaded revolver under his pillow.
His thoughts were faithfully reproduced in the papers and on fan sites. The Mumbai Mirror, however, condemned those Bollywood celebrities who sought to use the attacks as an opportunity for exposure as “vultures”. This blow to the Indian film industry comes at a crucial time of extensive Hollywood investment in Bollywood.
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