Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Butt-tocks beaten

Scare Quotes (" ") Warning!!
The Turner Prize, one of the art world's most hotly debated awards, has been won this year by a fellow named Simon Starling. Mr. Sparling turned a small shed into a boat, sailed it down the Rhine River for a bit, then re-rebuilt it as the original shed and entered it in the Turner Prize contest. The name of his somewhat unoriginal creation is "Shedboatshed". He has won some $40,000 USD.

You may remember The Turner Prize being awarded some time ago to "artist" Chris Ofili who created a figure of the Virgin Mary out of elephant poop. Ofili went on to become a trustee of London's Tate Britain museum, which hosts the annual Turner Prise awards. The Tate ultimately purchased Ofili's "masterpiece" of elephant poop for about $1,400,000 US funds. I'm sure that Ofili abstained from the final vote on the purchase, or was out to lunch, or something.

You might also remember that in 1995 a guy won the Turner Prize with a pickled sheep, or that in 2003, a tranvestite potter (that's someone who makes pottery) wore a frilly purple dress to accept his award. You also will recall, or perhaps you won't, that Madonna swore like a British sailer on live TV when she presented the 2001 prize to some no doubt deserving winner.

Anyway, "Shedboatshed" beat out the favored "Bum Paintings" of "artist" Gillian Carnegie who entered the contest with paintings of her own bum (that would be butt, butt-tocks or ass in real English). One might say that she got her butt beaten, one might.

The happy winner, Mr. Starling, remember, told anyone who was somewhat mystified by the artistic value of "Shedboatshed" that his art is, "the physical mainfestation of my thought process." Mark in Mexico thought that you might be interested in my own Physical Manifestation of My Thought Process. Here it is.



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