Tate Britain | Exhibitions

Teach Yourself Turner Prize Criticism

Remember the controversies of Turner Prizes past? Here's our quick reminder of what the papers said:

		How inspiration can be mistaken for imitation

		The Daily Telegraph

In the year that Tillmans won, journalists created an equal amount of controversy around another of the shortlisted artists, Glenn Brown, who was accused of plagiarism.

The Telegraph summed up the problem of Brown's The Loves of Shepherds after he was accused of copying a painting by Tony Roberts reproduced on the cover of a science-fiction book:

To those in the know, it would perhaps be considered an artful reworking in an ironic post-modern style. To others, including the original artist, it seemed more like theft

and asked where

inspiration ends and plagiarism begins

As ever, the issue of money lurked in the background, as The Telegraph revealed that Roberts was paid £180 in 1974 for his work, while Tillmans won the £20,000 prize and sold his painting for £30,000.

The Times' correspondent watched while the artist met the man whose work he was accused of plagiarising at the awards ceremony. Glenn Brown protested

Do you think I would spend six months painting it just to make money out of it?

and Anthony Roberts replied

Of course. Why else would anyone spend six months painting anything?

Roberts' reported opinion of the shortlisted artist's work was scathing:

It's clearly an exact copy ... The only thing he seems to have done is to have lost the lyrical poetry of the original

The Times fuelled flames by reporting that

The Tate was unaware that Mr Brown had copied the painting when he was selected for the shortlist

and claimed that the label beside the painting was only altered to include an acknowledgement to Roberts when a reader of their newspaper spotted that the work was what they described as

a stroke-by-stroke copy

Their report ended with the rueful observation that Roberts himself was

too old to compete for the Turner Prize