Should we share out top art prizes?

THIS year’s Turner Prize came down to human effigies, a futuristic feminist city, a film about Northern Ireland and a sound installation about Syria. In the end, everyone was a winner.

Before Tuesday’s prize-giving ceremony, all four nominees got together and decided they didn’t want an individual winner to be chosen. Instead they asked the judges to let them share the award.

There has never been a split for the Turner Prize before. But the reasoning behind splitting the coveted art award was not because it was so hard to compare their work but because the shortlisted artists wanted to make a show of unity in increasingly divisive times. They wanted to ensure one political issue would not appear to outshine another.

Has this been done before?

There has never been a tie in the award’s 35-year history but the prize has changed over the years.

Where artists would once vie for attention – think Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin – the shortlisted work has developed more of a social conscious in recent years. Where sharing glory previously would have made no sense, it is more acceptable for artists to divvy up the spotlight.

In their letter to the judges, the quartet said they all made art

“about social and political issues and contexts we believe are of great importance and urgency”.

They continued: “The politics we deal with differ greatly, and for us it would feel problematic if they were pitted against each other.”

What exactly is being shared?

In a literal sense, the award’s £40,000 prize money. But – and this is what artists will insist is more important – so is the attention that comes with being a Turner Prize winner. Instead of singling out one project, one topic, they have steered the conversation towards all four.

The jury unanimously granted their request. “We are honoured to be supporting this bold statement of solidarity and collaboration in these divided times,” they said. “Their symbolic act reflects the political and social poetics that we admire and value in their work.”

What was the reaction?

A mixed bag, really. The Independent declared: “The four nominees asked to share this year’s prize – but robbing the judges and the public of the opportunity to scrutinise and compare their work hurts the artists too,” commented Mark Hudson.

But Adrian Searle in the Guardian wrote: “’Good for them!’ – subverting the Turner prize is what artists are meant to do.

“Losers have sulked and even attacked people with gladioli. But the four shortlisted artists’ decision to share this year’s winnings could be the upset to end them all.”

Meanwhile Alastair Sooke wrote in the Telegraph: “Is the baffling Turner Prize 2019 result just a virtue signal for the snowflake era?”

Hasn’t there been an argument over splitting the Booker Prize? Yes. Bernardine Evaristo has called out the BBC after a news item referred to the sharing of the literary award between Margaret Atwood and “another author”.

Ms Evaristo, who became the first black woman to win the award this year, was given the prize jointly for her novel Girl, Woman, Other, and Atwood’s book The Testaments. The presenter was discussing this year’s Turner Prize when he made the comparison with the Booker.