The_Guardian_-_2016-12-29

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Art and design
Opinion
The Guardian view on Brexit and the arts: a
backlash against the modern
Editorial
The right wants to believe that contemporary art is a liberal-elite conspiracy. Five million visitors to
Tate Modern will tell you different
A man photographing Mr Allied by Helen Marten, winner of the 2016 Turner prize, who is as
successful commercially as she is critically. Photograph: Uwe Zucchi/EPA
Wednesday 28 December 2016 18.35 GMT Last modified on Wednesday 28 December 2016
22.00 GMT
Having a pop at the absurdities of contemporary art has long been a sport beloved of elements of the
press, and it has often been enjoyably and wittily played. The Sun, for example, had great fun in 2001,
when Martin Creed won the Turner prize, inviting readers to suggest their own ideas to add to Mr
Creed’s scrunched-up paper, Blu-Tack, and lights switching on and off. The British love to puncture
anything with a whiff of pretension. Not taking oneself too seriously is regarded as a precious
national virtue.
Yet the tone of rightwing attacks on contemporary art has sharpened this year in the wake of the Brexit
vote, as the critic JJ Charlesworth pointed out in ArtReview magazine. Michael Gove tweeted on the
night of the Turner prize that the works were mere “modish crap” celebrating “ugliness, nihilism and
narcissism – the tragic emptiness of now”. He later complained that the “last thing you should try to
do if you want to win the Turner is apply oil to a canvas in a manner which is any way
representational of man or nature”. He must have missed recent Turner shortlists that have featured
figurative work by painters including Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and George Shaw, as well as Paul
Noble, who makes exquisitely detailed drawings.
The accusation lurking in the wings is that contemporary art is a complicated con visited on the public
by a fanatical set of EU-loving, liberal-elite curators headed by Sir Nicholas Serota, who have set
about suppressing floral paintings (former Turner nominee, and sometime flower painter Gillian