on witnessing the adjuducation of the Threadneedle Prize

I was a despairing spectator as the judges
worked their way through well over 2,000 entries —
despairing at the sheer dreadfulness
of too many of the submissions,
despairing at the near total absence
of any merit in idea or execution.

I am now convinced that most artists
are creatures of overweening vanity
who have no idea how bad they are
and are quite incapable of self-criticism.

Here was a succession of canvases
in which the prime colour was kitsch pink,
the surface a ghastly plastic gloss.

Here was painting as crude as an inn-sign,
as unformed as the scribbles of a child.

Here were feeble and uncomprehending mimicries
of Auerbach and Doig,
Stanley Spencer and Edward Hopper,
the Kitchen Sink and Euston Road,
and discards from the Award Exhibition
at the National Portrait Gallery,
worse this year than ever.

The Threadneedle Prize deserves a better
response than this degraded stuff;
without the support of, above all,
serious figurative artists, it will only
consolidate its current position
as the victim of the hopeful amateur.

It must also have judges who are
in sympathy with its aims.
Of the six judges this year,
three were obviously not —
two deliberately subversive,
the third absurdly whimsical —
so that if the other three judges
were not in agreement,the work
under discussion had no chance.

Time after time ambitious pictures
were rejected for being ambitious
(including one that in my view
should have been the outright winner),
twee little things included for being twee
and the downright incompetent
praised for honesty and charm.

And at the end, when the shortlist
of seven from which the winner is
to be selected by public vote
had been assembled, one of the three judges
with gravitas uttered the damning words:
“Not one of these pictures
is worth £25,000
[the value of the prize] —
there is no winner here.”



from Which Threadneedle piece gets your vote? by Brian Sewell