2008 Turner Prize - Critics' Reception of The Exhibition As A Whole

Critics' Reception of The Exhibition As A Whole

Coverage was mostly negative. Richard Dorment wrote in The Daily Telegraph: "The shortlist for this year's Turner Prize is so wilfully opaque it's irrelevant." In his opinion the artists selected exemplified "Euro-art, a term I've made up to describe a certain kind of technically competent, bland, and ultimately empty art made specifically for international biennales." Similarly, Jonathan Jones wrote in The Guardian that the show "reflect a mentality only too dominant in art magazines and curating right now—a rather overthought, overtalked, pseudo-intellectual culture." In The Times, Rachel Campbell-Johnston wrote, "I can't help thinking that this show will prove ... like the returns desk of Ikea on a Monday morning. Lots of frustrated people will be left staring at a pile of inscrutable junk." In the Financial Times, Jackie Wullschlager wrote, "Don’t go. Don’t even think about going. This year’s Turner Prize exhibition is without competition the worst in the history of the award.... a killer mix of self-indulgence and academicism." Laura Cumming in The Observer agreed, "If ever you were thinking of giving the Turner Prize a miss then 2008 is the ideal year." saying that "t is not that the art is wilfully bad ... it is just that it is almost entirely inactive." In contrast, Adrian Searle wrote in The Guardian: "here's a depth and complexity that, it would be nice to think, might overtake the usual chat about winners and losers."

Outside the exhibition, the Stuckists art group handed out leaflets with the message "The Turner Prize is Crap", to protest the lack of figurative painting.