Seven Days in the Art World

With the DJ and the lighting, the event feels a bit like a prom, although more cosmopolitan than the one in De Palma’s Carrie. Indeed, it is a graduation, or at least an important rite of passage for many British artists.

“If the artists create artworks, then the judges create a winner. Whoever they chose is a reflection of themselves.”

Conceptual artist Martin Creed is feeling nostalgic. His winning installation from 2001, Work No. 227: The lights going on and off, is currently on display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. “I remember being scared of losing and not liking the fact that I cared about it so much,”

the batty dame, the flaming tortured soul. It’s a big part of the attraction of art—the work as a relic of the artist/saint/holy fool. People want to touch the cloth or whatever. It’s part of the religion.”

“Every year I put in a call to the one press officer who knows who has won at around four o’clock, whip up six hundred and fifty words by six, then throw on a clean frock and rush down here.”

“The monk-artist is an attractive archetype in a world where there are only so many—the belligerent drunk,

if we self-censor ourselves to accommodate the monetary world, we destroy the purity of art.”

The Turner Prize has a reputation for being a reliable indicator of an artist’s ability to sustain a vibrant art practice over the long term, but perhaps it is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“The spirit of art is to express the truth,”