Paints mean prizes

Major art prizes are the sexy, headline-grabbing Oscars of the art world. They have proliferated since the 1980s. A timeline of art awards in Britain would reveal the John Moores contemporary art prize, founded in 1957, as a pioneer and one of the few to focus on painting. The other key prizes that punctuate numerous artists’ CVs are mostly later additions: the Turner Prize (1984); the BP Portrait Award (1990); the Jerwood (1994); Artes Mundi (2004); the Celeste Art Prize (2005); and the Northern Art Prize (2006). There is a further layer of awards focused on graduates, linked to some of the UK’s main art schools.

Established in Liverpool by Littlewoods’ founder John Moores, the prize has taken place approximately every two years. It has been showcased through a series of eagerly anticipated, hotly debated exhibitions at the city’s Walker Art Gallery. Since 1957 the John Moores has awarded almost £460,000 in prize money. It is an open submission competition for living artists professionally based in the UK. Exhibitors and prize winners are chosen from the entries – a record 3,322 in 2008 – by a small jury that includes artists, critics and curators. Sir Peter Blake, Tracey Emin and the Chapman brothers are recent jurors. The exhibition’s prize fund has always been one of the country’s largest, currently standing at £37,000. The £25,000 first prize (£1,000 in 1957), plus the purchase of the winning painting by the Walker, make it a highly desirable goal. The prize money itself has bought houses and studios, paid off bank loans, been invested in better quality materials and provided temporary freedom from dependence upon making commissioned or purchase-friendly paintings. The professional recognition that accompanies being selected by such experienced and esteemed practitioners is also often stated by artists as a critical and motivating factor in their future development. The profile-raising publicity that comes with exhibiting, and particularly with winning, is also a significant door-opener in an artist’s career. From Roger Hilton and David Hockney in the early years to Peter Doig and Alexis Harding more recently, most winners cite the prize as highly influential, bringing national and international opportunities that would not otherwise have arisen.

Such financial prizes may provide only temporary respite to a young and emerging artist, and they are no substitute for the income that might be provided by regular sales, commissions, bursaries or the continuing support of a dealer or patron. Nor are there sufficient prizes to go round, and a scan through the various UK prizes will reveal a core of artists recurring on several shortlists. Collectively, however, they greatly bolster media and public attention and attract the eye of collectors, art dealers and public galleries, thus opening up a wider range of options to the artists. For the galleries that host them, their competitive aspect helps to attract visitors, and, certainly in the case of the John Moores, commission through sales. Additionally for the Walker, the permanent collection has developed in parallel with the exhibitions through the regular acquisition of prize-winning and other exhibited works, creating a collection which surveys British painting since 1957, from ‘kitchen sink’ realism and abstraction, through pop art, figuration and photo-realism to the diversity of the present day.

Most of the UK’s art prizes are themselves dependent upon external funding from individuals, trusts and organisations, and it goes without saying that in the longer term it is impossible to predict their financial stability. But the continued interest in the established awards and the creation of new ones – the Mall Galleries’ ‘Threadneedle Figurative Prize’ is the latest – suggests that they will be highlights on the art year’s calendar for some time to come.