Art Prizes Will Ruin You
Where did art prizes come from? Have we inherited them from another time, when aesthetic values were more stable than today, when to make a judgment of quality was a matter of absolutes? I’m not sure that there ever was such a time, certainly not in the last century. Are they a natural part of our pluralist age, when art’s variety leaves us craving after certainty- the knowledge that here is a work of excellence, outstripping all others? Perhaps. Or maybe we should think of them as an aspect of sport rather than art, in this country that knows the value of a gold medal.
Wherever they came from, they are with us in abundance. I have done no hard research, but it seems in the last couple of years there’s been a big increase in the number of prizes on offer to artists, and in the prize-money too. I suppose there are different reasons behind the institution of these prizes, from the promotion of the sponsor’s name to an altruistic desire to foster art, but one unavoidable consequence is the strengthening impression that art is knowable, even measurable, and deserving of reward and immediate promotion when it attains the forms we identify as the best. Somehow, in spite of our instinctual understanding that art appreciation involves taste and reflects the judge’s values as much as it determines intrinsic worth in the works, we have said yes to the proliferation of art prizes. Artists enter them, the media covers them, and audiences flock to them.
I have known art prizes from several angles. I have been a judge, I have worked as a volunteer in mounting one, and as co-winner of a prize in 2007 I once won half of a prize. Better-known to me than any of these roles, however, is the position of the spurned entrant. Like most artists, I have been culled from the field plenty of times, and it was only then that the full implications of submitting my work to a process of judgement that I knew was flawed, became apparent. From my own tainted experience, I will describe how easy it is for an artist to fall into the trap of chasing prizes, and the moral desolation that may ensue.
I should begin by noting that I have always known that art prizes are exercises in comparing apples with oranges, or onions with umbrellas. I’ve understood that more often than not the panel of judges includes persons whose status I do not necessarily hold in the highest esteem. For periods of years at a time I have stayed away from prizes on principle. And yet a prize can be a lure. There is the prospect of the money, a distant prospect to be sure, but better odds than Lotto, and think of what you could do with those thousands of dollars. From time to time I have allowed myself to wonder, “why couldn’t it be me that won? And even if I don’t win, there’s still the exhibition of finalists, a chance for my work to be seen by a whole new audience. Lots of artists have entered prizes and it didn’t seem to do them any harm…” Thus I have found myself on certain sunny weekdays, days when I should have been sitting under a tree or sweating in the studio, driving halfway across the city with a piece of my work baking under bubble-wrap in the back of the car. Having already walked the length of my suburb in search of a Justice of the Peace to verify my entry (an archaic requirement that adds an element of time-wasting infuriation to the affair), I’ve waited in line before handing over my work, and a cheque that would have paid for a large tub of lapis lazuli, to the people running the prize. The entering of an art prize is as difficult and as easy as that.
Having entered, there are three ways the story can end. I might be called shortly before the prize-winner is to be announced and urged to attend the opening, or told outright: you are the winner. This would appear to be the happy ending, but I remember that on telling my friend Ken Whisson that I had entered a prize, his shoulders slumped as he pleaded: “What happens if you win?” This, he thought, was the worst charade any artist could be asked to perform. A less perilous outcome would be my inclusion in the exhibition of finalists, saving me from the disappointment of failure and the embarrassment of victory. But what does it really mean to be honoured in a forum you were so ambivalent about to begin with? The most likely scenario, statistically if nothing else, is that I will neither win or be selected for exhibition. I will be rejected and my work will sit in a room at the rear of the gallery, unseen. The shame of this is not that I have been deemed unworthy. It is that in submitting to a process I knew was hollow at its core, I have slipped from the high moral ground that those who stay away from the prize circus happily occupy. It’s no good berating the judges after paying them the respect of entering the prize, and this pain of self-betrayal, compounding the pain of rejection, is deeper than most first-time entrants can know.
Perhaps I’m too sensitive, and need to work on thickening my hide. Some artists relish the thrill of competition. Just listen to Joe Furlonger in 2002, after his painting that was rejected at the Wynne Prize won the Fleurieu: “It’s become something to have a go at. It makes you get off your bum...They’re fun, that’s the other side. All this sort of ‘you’re in, you’re out. You’re out, you’re in.’ It puts a bit of blood through the veins.” (SMH, November 13, 2002). Such an easy come, easy go attitude is understandable in an artist who has kept on entering prizes year after year, but doesn’t it amount to an all-too-easy compliance in art’s demotion to entertainment, that cheapens us all? The prize circus demands that its performers laugh the shenanigans off when the ringleader whips them, then smile for the cameras and take the plaudits when they come.
What are art prizes good for? To those who would argue that they are a useful forum for artists to exhibit, I would say that invitational awards like the Kedumba Drawing Award, in which each artist knows from the outset that their work will be respectfully exhibited, are a better model than the all-comers-welcome prizes, in which the unsuccessful entrants fund the exhibition. If the organisers of these awards are energetic and imaginative in seeking out entrants, there is no reason why they cannot be as diverse and inclusive as the prizes we are used to seeing. Such awards build collections, acquiring multiple works at their actual cost, rather than throwing a suitcase of cash at a single winner. If it really is excellence and understanding we are looking for, it isn’t going to be fostered by treating artworks the same as sponge-cakes and cows at the Easter Show.