London Dada Work No. 997; Real Turner / Fake Art

(c) Michael St.Mark, December 5th 2017

To mark the 2017 Turner Prize event.

Dada photo montage within titled frame. Comprising reversed Turner self portrait surrounded by four contentious former prize-winning and associated exhibits.
The mirror-reversal of Turner’s c.1799 self-portrait shows the 24 year old artist close to how he actually appeared at the time, as artists of the day by necessity were obviously obliged to use mirrors to create them. ( links to Work 976l; Real Turner from July )

Image of the actual Self-Portrait before mirror-reversal correction

Self-Portrait c.1799 Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851 Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856.

Main image; Top right; Work No 227; The lights going on and off, by Martin Creed ( winner in 2001 with.. a ceiling light going on and off at regular short intervals )
Bottom left; Tracy Emin’s My Bed, shortlisted entry 1999.
Bottom right; Damien Hirst’s The physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone living ( dead shark suspended in formaldehyde ), closely associated with his TP-winning bisected cow and calf – Mother & Child Reunion (1995 )
Top left “Sleeper” by Mark Wallinger. Dressed in a comely bear suit for the duration of the 154 minute long film, bear Mark is featured wandering around a deserted German gallery. Wallinger won the Turner Prize in 2007 for “ State Britain“, a virtual copy (de-politicised and Blair-redacted) of war protestor Brian Haw’s hard-hitting multi placard spread in Parliament Square. RIP Brian.

In the light of Hugo Ball, the founding father of Dada’s statement;
” Art, for us, is not an end in itself, but it is an opportunity for true perception and fearless criticism of the times in which we live ”
… as well as the utter banality and mind-numbing pseudo intellectual vacuousness of the above Works – as well as many more besides – propel them well and truly into the turgid, stasis-filled, creatively stagnant realm of Fake Art

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RECENT POST. London Dada’s successful 12-year campaign to abolish the ageist Under-50 rule for Turner Prize entrants;

September 2017.
Turner Prize chiefs finally shamed into removing the anachronistic and blatantly ageist Under-50 rule for shortlisted entrants. Did any other artists have the moral spine to put their personal apple cart career futures on the line by daring to criticize the TP directors over this? Well… no actually.

Click through X2 on the collage for full legibility
Protest leaflet from Turner Prize 2016 event
LD POST from 2016; titled ” THE AGEIST TURNER PRIZE ” including protest video.