I am not sure whether to be pleased or not at this revelation. In the one sense, I am pleased that a 'simple' painting won the Turner Prize, rather than a pickled cow, or a painting with blobs of dung on it. On the other hand, I think the abstract painting itself is rather bland.
Taking Damien Hirst's pieces as an example, I think you can either love them, hate them, or nothing them. I find them visually interesting to look upon... for the first few minutes. Then I just find them dull. I fail to see the artistic value in them in the long term. In the short, it's fascinating. In the long term, it's just a dead animal pickled and left sitting for years at a time.
Don't get me wrong, I still feel people should see Hirst's work, I just don't feel that it should be held in as high a regard and awarded as prestigiously as it has been. On the other hand I still prefer him to Tracy Emmin, though that's not saying much.
I would rather look upon a beautifully created and technically complex piece of work. Something I don't see in 'Modern Art'. I have more respect for a painter who can paint photo-realistically, than one who paints abstract geometric shapes to represent emotions. Abstract art doesn't have to be painted in this way though. I once saw a series of work by a female artist who painted from photos. The photos themselves were taken with an electro-microscope and whilst what she was painting looked like a tree, it was in fact a cell dying. She was painting this scene photo-realistically though, and technically it was superb, whilst having an underlying meaning through 'the seen and the unseen'.
Call me old-fashioned, but I find skill in that.
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