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Commentary: Turner Prize winner
By Nick Hackworth, Evening Standard 05.12.06
The victory of Tomma Abts serves as a test of the depth of the exploding popularity of contemporary art. Favourites Rebecca Warren and Phil Collins were surprisingly overlooked.
When the prize was founded in the Eighties, few people cared about the art scene. In the Nineties the participation of Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin et al peaked public interest in the cultural crown jewel of Cool Britannia.
The punky vibe and engagement of the Young British Artists with popular culture provided subjects most viewers could latch onto. The work tackled the grand themes of sex, death and degradation. By contrast, Abts's austere and visually unexciting works may baffle the general public. For a long time she has painted abstract pieces only on modest canvases in acrylic and oil. The works have no obvious subject matter, but are an ongoing series of explorations of abstract forms that "pitches the rational against the intuitive".
She paints in layers, building up the mutely coloured works, and letting the various geometric forms and patterns, as she describes it, take their own shape, emerging according to some internal logic of the process of her paintings. This concentration on the method of painting that ambiguously apes the days of early Modernism should hearten purists. But if such people were among the crowd of art insiders at announcement, they were keeping quiet, for the decision was generally greeted with happy indifference.
In a year when none of the shortlist stood out, her victory didn't seem to matter. Some cynics unfairly suggested that the fact that Abts became only the third woman to win was instrumental in her triumph. Instead, Abts's works prove that art will often twist and turn according to its own strange dynamic. The strange abstract paintings are hardly the stuff of headlines and will pose a challenge to the public who tramp through the Tate.
How interested are most people in the painting about painting? The old conflict between populism and elite culture is unexpectedly revived by this victory.
