Has the Turner Prize made its bed?

Abstract

Rage and outrage, symptoms increasingly enacted in our daily lives, may be due to PMT— premillennial tension, that is, the pressure to have and say it all before the chimes strike out midnight on December 31. In this, the art world is no exception; the Turner Prize shortlist and exhibition has covered enough steaming column inches to put it back on its perennially disputed pedestal as the most prestigious and pilloried visual-arts award in the UK. Last year, the penultimate millennial year, the Turner Prize exhibition lost some of its notoriety because, elephant dung aside, the usual moan about the death of painting couldn't be applied, and what is more, the painter won, despite a competitive multimedia arena that was otherwise integral and stimulating.