K Foundation Art Award - Media and Art-world Reaction

Media and Art-world Reaction

A huge amount of press publicity ensued, with all the major newspapers and press organisations reporting that Whiteread had won both awards. Media reaction to the K Foundation award was mixed. David Mills wrote in The Times that The K Foundation's campaign was "tiresome", and he asked "Doesn't it strike anyone as odd that a group of people who made their money with such artistic endeavours as a disco-version of the Dr Who theme should be suggesting that contemporary art was somehow more fatuous than that?"

Rachel Whiteread had an advertisement printed in the British magazine, Art Monthly, in which she outlined her plan to donate £10,000 to Shelter and distribute the remainder in grants to 10 needy artists. In the advertisement she stated that she "does not agree with the K Foundation's aims or methods". Displaying perhaps a little humour, Whiteread's advertisement was in a similar style to the K Foundation ads, with stark white text on a black background.

Scottish sculptor David Mach opined to Scotland on Sunday that "They're just a bunch of silly buggers. It's good to see money going from a bunch of silly buggers to an artist who is going to make good use of it. What's that saying about a fool and his money...?" John Bellany, on the other hand, said that "The emotional, artistic side of nature... admire the audacity and imagination, challenging art and the art manipulators. The rational side of me asks, is this the most expensive art publicity stunt this century, and for whom?"

Whiteread's agent Karsten Schubert said, "The whole affair was a non-event. They achieved nothing and they were left looking like real prats." Peter Chater, a director of Schubert's agency concurred; he called Drummond and Cauty "cowards". "It was obviously a publicity stunt. What sort of statement they were trying to make I don't know. If it was anything to do with the relationship between art and money it was pretty crass. The KLF made a fortune from a couple of successful singles. Artists aren't in that position. Threatening to set light to £40,000 is pretty obscene." Former Factory Records boss Tony Wilson applauded the group, however. "The K Foundation is a very peculiar avant garde group whose ideas are as valid anything the Turner people do," he told NME. "Since when has there been laws governing what constitutes art, or an artistic statement? OK, so a lot of people don't understand what Bill and Jimmy are trying to say, but how many people know exactly what Rachel Whiteread's trying to say with her art?"

Modern Review art critic John O'Reilly, another of the K Foundation's witnesses, said: "The whole point of the K Foundation is its anonymity. There's no origin, just a Circulation of data and concepts. There is no master plan, no grand narrative." O'Reilly also " sense of waste and sacrifice involved".

Miranda Sawyer, who attended the presentation, found special interest in a subsidiary incident during the evening of the prize ceremonies: the theft of money by several of the other invited witnesses: "All the feelings of power and powerlessness that money can bring were fairly summarised with these thefts - it must have turned out better than the K Foundation could have hoped if the examination of cash, art and associated feelings was their point." Sawyer named "Britart" figure Carl Freedman as one of those who had taken the money, and reported that "He found the event funny, not offensive (you would too if you walked off with £1,600!), but thought the point had been made before."

Writer and "underground art historian" Stewart Home was viciously supportive of the K Foundation. "The avant-garde wasn't to be seen at the Turner Prize gathering, it was to be found among that select band of individuals who'd organised the K Foundation's attack on the smug complacency of the arts establishment.... 'dignitaries' such as Lord Polumbo were revealed as buffoons. While Polumbo ranted about the dunces who attack cultural innovations, his rhetoric showed him to be a complete idiot — several people immediately pointed out that he was unable to correctly name Van Gogh's art dealer brother. Likewise, Polumbo claimed that there are no monuments erected to critics and presented himself as a champion of progressive culture, while ignoring the fact that it was critics who picked the winner of the prize he was awarding. It is the K Foundation, rather than Whiteread, who represent a vital and innovative strand within contemporary culture. Their work is simultaneously a critique and a celebration of 'consumer capitalism'."

A New Musical Express piece on 20 November 1993 was also highly supportive of the K Foundation. "The nearest parallel to the K Foundation donation would be The Beatles' grandiose plans for Apple Corps", they said. "But where Apple handed out money willy-nilly to little end and failed to achieve anything more than get some hippies stoned and put up some nice posters about war being over if you want it, Drummond and Cauty have found a specific target - the relationship between art, money and the critical establishment- and attacked it. By actually offering £40,000 to the artist who produces the duffest piece of work, they've simultaneously sent up the whole thing and proved their integrity the hard way."

The Face magazine's witness wrote that "The accusation that this is a tiresome Situationist gag with a whoopee cushion pay-off belittles the K Foundation's distracted message. They are not mocking any of the artists involved in the Turner or their work so much as the whole tired institution of awards themselves.... By telling us to "use our critical faculties or our innate prejudice" to vote, the Ks are asking: "Who decides who decides?""

The Independent's witness, David Lister, was less impressed. "Last night's highly eccentric mystery tour by the K Foundation probably said more about the wealth that can be accumulated from two number one hit records than it did about any resurgence of Dadaism", he said.

The Guardian said that Jimmy Cauty, " responsible for a best-selling Athena poster of the Hobbit ... can justly say he has adorned more walls than any of the Turner nominees"; and added: "A grand deflation of the pretensions of the wealthy art elite is an aim that has drawn approval from sections of the art world and philistines who find 'installations' of knotted rope or beds covered in rice curiously unmoving.... The joke may yet prove to be at the expense of the Turner." In a separate piece, the newspaper implied that the K Foundation had hit their perceived target with some success: