The Turner Prize is a prize awarded every year to a British artist. It is for visual arts only and all candidates must be under 50 years old.
The prize is named after the British painter J. W. W. (Joseph Mallord William) Turner, who died in 1851. Turner was especially famous for his landscapes, mainly in watercolour, and above all for his depiction of light and storms. In his own time many critics regarded his work as strange, but he has since come to be regarded as one of the greatest of all British artists.
It is partly because he was controversial at the time (as would be the work of many prizewinners) that Turner’s name was later chosen to symbolize an art prize, but also because Turner had thought a prize should be set up to encourage young artists.
The founders of the prize were a group of critics and art collectors who called themselves the Patrons of New Art. This group was originally formed in 1982 and their task at that time was to find new artists and works to buy for the Tate Gallery and to spread knowledge about and interest in modern art. In 1984 they created a new prize, for young (well, under 50) artists who had produced outstanding work in the last 12 months (it’s also necessary for Turner Prize candidates to be still working – it’s not a lifetime award but intended for artists who hopefully will continue to produce work in the future). Names of individual Patrons of New Art are not generally made available to the general public (it is in fact possible for anyone to become a patron of the Tate, with patronage at silver, gold and platinum levels depending on how much they donate and their degree of involvement). However, the prize money (which has now reached £40,000) is awarded by different sponsors – for example, for a number of years Channel 4 was involved in the sponsorship but the prize is now sponsored by the company Gordon’s Gin. In 1990 no prize was given due to lack of money, but this has never happened since.
In 1984 the first Turner Prize (worth about £10,000 at that time) was officially awarded. The winner was a US based British artist called Malcolm Morley, probably best known for his 1975 painting ‘Train Wreck’.
Like the artist for whom it is named, the Turner Prize tends to divide opinion among both critics and the general public. It is judged by a mixture of experts including critics and art curators, and the chairman is sir Nicholas Serota, the director of the Tate. (Although in 2013 the prize was held at Tate Liverpool and chaired by the director there). In the past there have been arguments over the jury’s selections; an early example of controversy was in 1986, when the prize was awarded to Gilbert and George. This duo were known for images that caused annoyance or disgust, such as a picture of themselves admiring a collection of dirty underwear. Their explicit photography also caused a lot of debate.
More recently, perhaps the most controversial winner was Damien Hirst in 1995. Among the pictures he showed at the Turner Prize exhibition was ‘Mother and Child Divided’. This showed four large glass tanks, containing a cow and a calf, each cut in half and preserved in formaldehyde. It was similar to his earlier and even more famous work, a shark in formaldehyde with the title ‘The Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living’. Many other artists since Hirst have created public discussion, but he remains for many the ultimate example of the controversial Turner Prize winner.