Walker Art Gallery: John Moore's Painting Prize

Visit: 3rd October

"M is Many" - Ian Law

1967 saw Barthes publish “The Death of the Author”, but the John Moores Painting Prize 2012 has moved beyond this postmodern notion; it would appear the viewer as well as the author have been assassinated under our noses, leaving the artworks amidst an uncertain wilderness. The walls of this year’s exhibition support the arrogant, condescending glares of canvases and materials that do not need the interpretation of any visitor to guarantee meaning or appreciation, nor do the visitors necessarily search for instruction from the artist or their intention; each works’ significance is locked within themselves, hidden and uncertain to an onlooker.

This begs the question “why?” What is the use of a painting prize where the position and relationships of the works, artists and visitor are uncertain? If the purpose is to create debate, promote, or celebrate the art of painting as it exists today with the public as viewers, it would seem to have gone rather unsuccessfully. With the winner, the selection panel appear to have been deliberately (and somewhat predictably) unpredictable, favouring a potentially contentious or provoking piece rather than a “safer” option of obvious traditional characteristics (of which the British exhibition is almost too obviously lacking). The choice seems to have backfired though, as Pickstone’s Stevie Smith and the Willow (2012) hasn’t encouraged much criticism/debate, and has in fact been accepted with silence, or rather indifference. The panel may have misread the exhibition’s audience for a suitably varied cross-section of the public, instead of the self-proclaimed art-experts and art students that stroll carefully across the gallery floor, interpreting each abstract piece with rehearsed scripts of visual theory and contrived esteem.

Primarily displaying shortlisted UK entries, four winners of the John Moores Painting Prize China 2012 also appear alongside, arguably having detrimental effects on the home turf. Wenlong’s Aphasia (2010) demonstrates a staggering impact of photo-realist painterly skill. This is not to display an unfair bias towards technical skill however, it is merely the case that the China Prize entries present a solid force of more original and powerful paintings compared to the weaker, sparser attempts from the UK. Of course some display admirable astute wit, such as Liversidge’s Proposal for the Jury of the John Moores Painting Prize 2012 (2012). Individually the works are likeable, but they sadly present nothing more. Upon entering rooms filled with the best contemporary paintings one expects a great something; a gut reaction of any sort as a bare minimum. Expectations are not met.

Selection panellist George Shaw suggested the notion that each of the works appear to be “painted in a vacuum”; there is no intended coherency or narrative running through the exhibition, each piece is made by an individual, to be individual. The art world could currently be said to be mirroring the world of media that has become so powerful and all-consuming. Within modern Western society, new media houses unlimited democratic platforms where every citizen is freely entitled to share infinite views or project infinite ideologies. Now, everyman is an artist if they so choose. This presents us with another glaring question that screams from the white space eyes move to after each canvas, page and board in the John Moores Painting Prize: what is the role of the painter in society now, or even the artist?

"Stevie Smith and The Willow" - Sarah Pickstone

If, as it would appear, the idea is just as, if not more relevant to contemporary painting as its execution, why then is the medium even relevant? Could James Bloomfield not have portrayed a world becoming desensitised to the rising death counts in wars that are splashed in the media in a more appropriate or powerful way than a painting entered into a competition? Does this do the subject justice? The answer is probably yes to the former and no to the latter, seeing as it is a subject we have all acknowledged. The question of how this painting benefits society or even an individual is one which seems unfair to ask, but that does not mean it can be side-stepped to avoid awkwardness. Anyone can make art now, and many choose to, but does this make everyone an artist? Or is this merely an attempt at inclusivity; a superficial community in a lonely and isolated body of citizens. Of course in a politically correct world it does make everyone an artist, but doesn’t this reduce the worth of the word “artist”. No longer a Leonardo da Vinci or James Whistler, the artist has had its elitist, oh-so Romantic, mythical ideal stolen, and in its place stands everyone. Liberating and democratic for sure, but try and say it doesn’t feel like a tearful goodbye to a childhood hero.

The John Moores Painting Prize 2012 presents 62 paintings. If all are “created in a vacuum” then the vacuum is bigger than the artists and their own individual works; we are all in it. This is contemporary painting; welcome to the vacuum.