Hanging’s Too Good For ‘Em

‘YOU’D know if former culture minister Kim Howells has visited Tate Britain lately because beneath each artwork would be written the words ‘cold, mechanical, conceptual bullshit’.

Tracey, age 5 and a 1/2

But this is no Turner Prize, this is art.

And the chance for museum-goers to say what they think is worthy of more consideration than that given by the aforementioned Howells.

By way of a pointer as to what is expected of art lovers taking up the museum’s invitation to write their own labels to position alongside each hanging, the Guardian produces what the gallery has said and then what a few punters think.

So let’s hear from American tourist Jill Purdy, as she casts her eye over Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of Figures at the Base of Crucifixion.

‘Although the images are completely foreign, their emotions are distinctly human,’ says she.

Perhaps, says 16-year-old Luke Williams, but he rather thinks it’s ‘an abstract view of life from three different perspectives’.

‘It looks like a plucked chicken getting stuffed,’ chimes in Anorak’s art reporter.

And so it might, because art can mean different things to different people – that’s its great trick.

When we look at the Guardian’s second picture up for comment – Tracey Emin’s Sad Shower – we hear from the suitably named Claire Waffel, who says ‘the person appears so fragile because everything has been taken away’.

And once more from our art critic who says it’s ‘a doodle on a white piece of paper of the type passed off as art on a gullible world’.

So off she goes with her can of spray paint to share her expertise with other visitors to the London gallery.

How many l’s there are in ‘Bollocks’?’

Posted: 7th, September 2004 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink