January 2009

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Tomorrow’s announcement of the shortlist for this year’s Turner Prize has been neatly preceded by the unveiling of the shortlist for the ‘Booker of Bookers’. Six novels have been chosen from the 41 that have won since the Booker Prize was founded in 1969 (in 1974 the prize was split between Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist and Stanley Middleton’s Holiday – Gordimer’s novel is on the new shortlist, but who has read Middleton’s?) The shortlist seems fairly quirky to me – can anyone seriously believe, for example, that Pat Barker’s The Ghost Road (which is on the list) is superior to Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty (which is not)? Anyway, the whole point of such lists is to stir up discussion and get some publicity, useful in the case of the Booker, for which public enthusiasm has been flagging. That isn’t the case with the Turner Prize, although there have been attempts – notably in its 25th year, in 2003 – to choose the most popular winner. The list makes fascinating reading. Just about every obvious name is on it, although some have had to wait a bit (the prize, it is often forgotten, is for the year’s best show – it is not a lifetime achievement award). What is most striking about a comparison of the lists of Booker Prize and Turner Prize winners is that none of the former is truly obscure (although apparently the judges had great trouble in tracking down a copy of the first winner, P. H. Newby’s Something to Answer For), whereas the shorter Turner Prize list has several names that owe their wider reputation solely to having won the Turner Prize – Grenville Davey, for example (winner in 1992). Personally, I can’t believe that anyone is going to remember Tomma Abts for much else in 25 years’ time. We attach below a list of the winners since the prize started in 1984: who would be your choice for a ‘Turner of Turners’? See our blog tomorrow for coverage of the unveiling of the shortlist.
1984 Malcolm Morley; 1985 Howard Hodgkin; 1986 Gilbert & George; 1987 Richard Deacon; 1988 Tony Cragg; 1989 Richard Long; 1990 no prize; 1991 Anish Kapoor; 1992 Grenville Davey; 1993 Rachel Whiteread; 1994 Antony Gormley; 1995 Damien Hirst; 1996 Douglas Gordon; 1997 Gillian Wearing; 1998 Chris Ofili; 1999 Steve McQueen; 2000 Wolfgang Tillmans; 2001 Martin Creed; 2002 Keith Tyson; 2003 Grayson Perry; 2004 Jeremy Deller; 2005 Simon Starling; 2006 Tomma Abts; 2007 Mark Wallinger.

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