The Turner Prize judges have scored a direct hit. The reaction to the work of Richard Wright is impressive for the tone it strikes and the connection it suggests between contemporary art and a wide public, Richard Godwin suggests in the London Evening Standard:
Wright created its patterns and motifs with hand and brush, portion by tiny portion. When the Turner Prize exhibition has finished, the wall will be painted over in white matt, lost to us – and to the art market – for ever. “This work is not for the future. It’s for now,” the artist explains, gracefully. […]
Outside the exhibition, the comments pinned up by other visitors echoed this reaction: “[I liked] Richard Wright because it was lovely and made sense,” said one; “Refreshingly quiet, modestly beautiful,” said another.
Wright himself said he was touched by these responses. It’s as if people come along to the exhibition “perhaps expecting art to be awful”, he suggested. […]
Somewhere, contemporary art has become a mass leisure activity. That this has happened in a period where a few artists have grown rich beyond their wildest dreams is no coincidence.
That they should have come to produce the brash, mean, esoteric and lazy works we associate with Turner Prize shows is perhaps an extension of this too. The most striking result, however, is that dutiful gallery-goers feel intimidated and mocked – and most don’t dare complain.
This Turner Prize is Proof We Year for Honest Art (This Is London)
