Artists used to be transgressive. These Turner Prize winners are just brainwashed Tory-bashers

For a long time now, the Turner Prize has been a joke award, merely designed to cause controversy and attract headlines, as opposed to recognising artistic talent. But this year’s ceremony was by far the worst yet. Four nominees for the £40,000 prize asked the judges not to choose any of them as a single winner, so that they could share out the money instead.

Perhaps it could be said they’d been inspired by the Booker Prize, which was jointly given to Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo (albeit due to an indecisive judging panel). Actually, the reason for the split was a lot more “woke” than that.

The quartet said it would feel “problematic” if they were “pitted against each other”. Their work, they insisted, was “incompatible with the competition format, whose tendency is to divide and to individualise”. So they wanted to speak out in “an era marked by the rise of the Right and the renewal of fascism in an era of the Conservatives”.

This was a ridiculous tirade — and for all sorts of reasons. For one thing, there is no shame in winning. These moralising buffoons have sent out a terrible message to society, particularly young people: that shunning personal recognition is the noble thing to do. They’re wrong. Competition is healthy, motivating and part of human nature.

The Turner prizewinners also showed an incredible lack of awareness about the connotations of individualism and collectivism. The former is intrinsic to the arts, which have been crucial in promoting dissident and marginalised voices. Art allows us to express ourselves in any way we see fit.

Collectivism, on the other hand (which was hinted at through the quartet’s gesture), can often be found in cultures that suppress all forms of artistry. In Mao’s China, as a historical example, even people who deviated from state-authorised haircuts would be demonised as “bourgeois”. Artists are still persecuted in China today, which is why even a major figure such as Ai Weiwei lives in the West.

The most astonishing part of the Turner tirade, however, was to hear the artists bemoaning “the rise of the Right and the renewal of fascism”. We have heard enough hysteria of this kind from our delusional political elites, without the cultural one echoing them. It was all the more ludicrous, given that these artists thought they were making a political protest — hardly something that they could do in a genuinely fascist state.

One of the Turner Gang of Four had created a feminist fantasy world called “beyond patriarchal limits” (how original!) and another had made hers around the Northern Irish Troubles. In a real fascist country like Iran, this sort of work could never take place, as it’s illegal to spread ideals that are not state-approved. Poets, musicians and artists are constantly censored. Noureddin Zarrinkelk, as one instance, was a famous animator in the country, but he lost his faculty position for touching the hair of a female student in a lesson, thereby breaching Islamic guidelines.

Can you imagine how Zarrinkelk, or any other artist in an oppressive state, would react to this preposterous posse? Don’t they realise how foolish they look with their poncy award, complaining that they’re the victims of fascism? Does it occur to them how offensive they are to those going through true hardship, none of whom seem to feature on the radar of these so-called “progressives”.

In another part of their statement, the artists said the “politics we deal with differ greatly”, adding that sharing the prize was a “symbolic gesture of cohesion”. But it wasn’t that at all. The only thing it symbolised was four people stroking each other’s egos and hoping to take a pop at the Tory government. Let’s hope their future art collectors — who will inevitably be rich — are sympathetic to such views.

Turner Prize controversies are often silly but also fun. Not this year: the greatest shock was the brainwashed complicity of judges and winners alike. Groupthink has clearly taken over in this corner of the art world. The great artist after whom the prize is named must be turning in his grave.