K Foundation art award
Encyclopedia
The 1994 K Foundation award was an award given by the K Foundation
(Bill Drummond
and Jimmy Cauty
) to the "worst artist of the year". The shortlist for the £40,000 K Foundation award was identical to the shortlist for the well-established but controversial £20,000 Turner Prize
for the best British Contemporary art
ist. On the evening of 23 November 1993, Rachel Whiteread
was presented with the 1993 Turner Prize
inside London's Tate Gallery
, and the 1994 K Foundation award on the street outside.
Prior to presenting their award, the K Foundation held a private exhibit of a collection of art works entitled Money - A Major Body of Cash. The award, the exhibition and the accompanying extravagant press junket were widely reported by the media.
" which was "Available nowhere ... no formats" and which was not planned for release until world peace was established.
There was a change of direction with the fourth advert which appeared on 14 August 1993, reading: "ABANDON ALL ART NOW. Major rethink in progress. Await further announcements." The next ad (28 August 1993) read: "It has come to our attention that you did not abandon all art now. Further direct action is thus necessary. The K Foundation announce the 'mutha of all awards', the 1994 K Foundation award for the worst artist of the year." It then went on to detail how a shortlist of four artists had been chosen, and that they would be exhibited in the Tate Gallery
.
One of the first newspaper pieces about the K Foundation appeared in The Guardian
the following Monday, correctly pointing out that the shortlist and exhibition were actually for the 1993 Turner Prize
, the controversial £20,000 annual award given by the UK art establishment to the best young contemporary artist, but assuming that the K Foundation prize was a hoax. "As for the K Foundation", the newspaper wrote, "it stands unmasked as the current performing face of those cherished old friends of pop pranksterdom, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty
", formerly known as The KLF
. In September, the organisers of the Turner Prize responded publicly that "It proves the validity of our prize that somebody would take so much trouble to set up this award".
The Foundation's next advert invited the general public to vote for the worst artist, either by going to the exhibition and using their critical faculties or by letting their inherent prejudices come to the fore. The final advert summarised the whole campaign, asked some questions back to the people that had written to them, and explained that the winner of the K Foundation award would be announced in a TV advert during the live Turner Prize coverage on Channel 4
television.
On 20 November 1993, The Economist
reported on the K Foundation prize and placed it in context. "Every autumn for the past ten years, an increasingly bad-tempered squabble has raged between, on the one hand, many of Britain's art critics and its popular media, and on the other, its avant-garde "establishment," the small croterie of art historians, curators, and dealers who control the Turner prize." Predicting that Rachel Whiteread
, creator of the controversial sculpture, House, would win both awards, the magazine said that, if it were so, "the vast numbers of people who equate contemporary art with rubbish will, yet again, feel vindicated."
The K Foundation's television adverts on the evening of 23 November 1993 explained that the Foundation were currently "amending the history of art" at a secret location. No mention of the alternative award was made in the post-Turner Prize studio discussion. However, in the Turner Prize ceremony itself, Lord Palumbo, head of the Arts Council
, referred to critics of the Turner Prize as a "confederacy of dunces". The K Foundation reportedly pre-announced Rachel Whiteread
as their winner at 2pm or, at least, at some time before the Turner; at 9.30pm, live on television, the Turner Prize was awarded to the same artist. Whiteread reluctantly collected her K Foundation winnings at just past 11pm, saying, "sarcastically, "What an honour.""
Drummond claimed the advertising campaign cost £250,000. The television advertisements cost £20,000, an amount which Scotland on Sunday
said was "carefully chosen to match the value of the Turner prize", the newspaper adding that "Copies of the invoices were supplied as evidence." Each press advert cost between £5,000 and £15,000.
25 witnesses - including art critics, journalists, music industry figures and artists - were invited to participate in the Foundation's "Amending of art history". They were driven in a convoy of white limousines, led by a gold limo, to Heston Service Station where they were handed a press release and £1650 in crisp new £50 notes. The accompanying press release stated that 25 x £1600 collectively made up the £40000 K Foundation prize, and that the extra £50 was for the witness to verify its authenticity by spending it. The witnesses were dressed in fluorescent orange hard hats and safety jackets.
The convoy proceeded to a field patrolled by two orange-painted K Foundation Saracen armoured cars
, driven by Drummond and Cauty, broadcasting the K Foundation's K Cera Cera
and ABBA
's "Money Money Money". Silver-bearded "Mr Ball", the K Foundation's compere, directed the witnesses to nail their wad of money to a board inside a gilt frame, to assemble the K Foundation's prize. Some of the witnesses pocketed all or some of their wad, and the prize money was, according to Danny Kelly
, some £9000 short. Mr Ball also directed the witnesses to "view the art": One million pounds in £50 notes, nailed to a large framed board. This was the K Foundation's first art work, Nailed To A Wall, "the first of a series of K Foundation art installations that will also include one million pounds in a skip, one million pounds on a table and several variants on the theme of Tremendous Amounts Of Folding".
Collectively, the K Foundation's money-as-art works were titled Money: A Major Body Of Cash, "seven pieces, all involving various amounts of cash nailed to, tied to or simply standing on inanimate objects". Nailed To A Wall had a reserve price of £500,000, half the face value of the cash used in its construction, which Scotland on Sundays reporter Robert Dawson Scott was "fairly confident... really was £1 million [in cash]". The catalogue entry for the artwork stated: "Over the years the face value will be eroded by inflation, while the artistic value will rise and rise. The precise point at which the artistic value will overtake the face value is unknown. Deconstruct the work now and you double your money. Hang it on a wall and watch the face value erode, the market value fluctuate, and the artistic value soar. The choice is yours."
Rachel Whiteread had already been notified of her "victory" but had refused to accept the prize or allow the K Foundation to use her name. The motorcade left the site of the amending of art-history and headed back to London, for a showdown with Whiteread on the steps of the Tate. When she again refused to accept the money, the K Foundation explained that it would be burnt. With the crowd of now very drunk witnesses looking on, a masked K Foundation operative (Gimpo) fumbled with matches and lighter fluid. At the last moment Rachel Whiteread emerged from the Tate and accepted the money, stating that she would give it as grants to needy artists.
The next day, the K Foundation's publicist, Mick Houghton, claimed that the voting for the K Foundation's award was supposed to produce a tie, to illustrate the hypocrisy of the Turner award committee, but that strangely the result had been a huge margin of victory for Whiteread. He speculated that the few thousand voters had just liked or rather disliked the sound of her name.
Defending Whiteread, Lord Palumbo told The Guardian
that: "Talent at the highest level attracts derision. We must let the artist fail."
Whiteread's sculpture, House, was demolished on 11 January 1994.
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 [his] nature... admire[d] 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 "[enjoyed the] 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, "[as the artist] 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:
quoted author James F. English's description of The K Foundation's Art Award as "hostile philanthropy". Sunday Times writer Bryan Appleyard
added that the "K Foundation's witty exploitations of artistic greed ... are essential aspects of the prize itself. They promote the prize, reassure the organisers that, culturally speaking, they are in the thick of it and console the artists with evidence that their work provokes strong reactions. More importantly, for English, such conflicts demonstrate the autonomous nature of the event. These prizes should not be seen as any real or lasting judgment about art, but rather as things in themselves."
Some years after the award, Bill Drummond attempted to explain the K Foundation's motives, as he now saw them:
. (See: K Foundation Burn a Million Quid). In an interview with Drummond, Cauty and Gimpo, Gimpo admitted to harbouring guilt about the million pounds burning; that if he'd burnt Whiteread's £40,000 the million pounds burning would never have happened. "I should have burnt it. I had petrol all over the £40,000... We were due to wait until eleven o'clock until she came out, but we were told to wait another two minutes... [then] Rachel Whiteread came running out. She just grabbed the money and dragged it over the fence." Carl Freedman also wished they'd burnt Whiteread's money. "It would have been brilliant.... It would have been just totally outrageous. People would have been falling out of their-chairs, saying. 'I can't believe they just burned £40,000'".
K Foundation
The K Foundation was an art foundation set up by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty in 1993, following their 'retirement' from the music industry. The Foundation served as an artistic outlet for the duo's post-retirement KLF income...
(Bill Drummond
Bill Drummond
William Ernest Drummond is a Scottish artist, musician, writer and record producer. He was the co-founder of late 1980s avant-garde pop group The KLF and its 1990s media-manipulating successor, the K Foundation, with which he burned a million pounds in 1994...
and Jimmy Cauty
Jimmy Cauty
James Francis Cauty is a British artist and musician born in Liverpool, England, in 1956...
) to the "worst artist of the year". The shortlist for the £40,000 K Foundation award was identical to the shortlist for the well-established but controversial £20,000 Turner Prize
Turner Prize
The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...
for the best British Contemporary art
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
ist. On the evening of 23 November 1993, Rachel Whiteread
Rachel Whiteread
Rachel Whiteread, CBE is an English artist, best known for her sculptures, which typically take the form of casts. She won the annual Turner Prize in 1993—the first woman to win the prize....
was presented with the 1993 Turner Prize
Turner Prize
The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...
inside London's Tate Gallery
Tate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
, and the 1994 K Foundation award on the street outside.
Prior to presenting their award, the K Foundation held a private exhibit of a collection of art works entitled Money - A Major Body of Cash. The award, the exhibition and the accompanying extravagant press junket were widely reported by the media.
Context
In June 1993 the newly-formed K Foundation began taking out full page national press adverts. Initial advertisements were cryptic, referring to "K Time" and advising readers to "Kick out the clocks". They mentioned five year journeys which included pop success and deep space travel and that "the sands of time are running in". There was also an advert for the K Foundation's single "K Cera CeraK Cera Cera
"K Cera Cera", a presentation of The Red Army Choir by the K Foundation , was released as a limited edition single in Israel and Palestine in November 1993...
" which was "Available nowhere ... no formats" and which was not planned for release until world peace was established.
There was a change of direction with the fourth advert which appeared on 14 August 1993, reading: "ABANDON ALL ART NOW. Major rethink in progress. Await further announcements." The next ad (28 August 1993) read: "It has come to our attention that you did not abandon all art now. Further direct action is thus necessary. The K Foundation announce the 'mutha of all awards', the 1994 K Foundation award for the worst artist of the year." It then went on to detail how a shortlist of four artists had been chosen, and that they would be exhibited in the Tate Gallery
Tate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
.
One of the first newspaper pieces about the K Foundation appeared in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
the following Monday, correctly pointing out that the shortlist and exhibition were actually for the 1993 Turner Prize
Turner Prize
The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...
, the controversial £20,000 annual award given by the UK art establishment to the best young contemporary artist, but assuming that the K Foundation prize was a hoax. "As for the K Foundation", the newspaper wrote, "it stands unmasked as the current performing face of those cherished old friends of pop pranksterdom, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty
Jimmy Cauty
James Francis Cauty is a British artist and musician born in Liverpool, England, in 1956...
", formerly known as The KLF
The KLF
The KLF were one of the seminal bands of the British acid house movement during the late 1980s and early 1990s....
. In September, the organisers of the Turner Prize responded publicly that "It proves the validity of our prize that somebody would take so much trouble to set up this award".
The Foundation's next advert invited the general public to vote for the worst artist, either by going to the exhibition and using their critical faculties or by letting their inherent prejudices come to the fore. The final advert summarised the whole campaign, asked some questions back to the people that had written to them, and explained that the winner of the K Foundation award would be announced in a TV advert during the live Turner Prize coverage on Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
television.
On 20 November 1993, The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
reported on the K Foundation prize and placed it in context. "Every autumn for the past ten years, an increasingly bad-tempered squabble has raged between, on the one hand, many of Britain's art critics and its popular media, and on the other, its avant-garde "establishment," the small croterie of art historians, curators, and dealers who control the Turner prize." Predicting that Rachel Whiteread
Rachel Whiteread
Rachel Whiteread, CBE is an English artist, best known for her sculptures, which typically take the form of casts. She won the annual Turner Prize in 1993—the first woman to win the prize....
, creator of the controversial sculpture, House, would win both awards, the magazine said that, if it were so, "the vast numbers of people who equate contemporary art with rubbish will, yet again, feel vindicated."
The K Foundation's television adverts on the evening of 23 November 1993 explained that the Foundation were currently "amending the history of art" at a secret location. No mention of the alternative award was made in the post-Turner Prize studio discussion. However, in the Turner Prize ceremony itself, Lord Palumbo, head of the Arts Council
Arts Council of Great Britain
The Arts Council of Great Britain was a non-departmental public body dedicated to the promotion of the fine arts in Great Britain. The Arts Council of Great Britain was divided in 1994 to form the Arts Council of England , the Scottish Arts Council, and the Arts Council of Wales...
, referred to critics of the Turner Prize as a "confederacy of dunces". The K Foundation reportedly pre-announced Rachel Whiteread
Rachel Whiteread
Rachel Whiteread, CBE is an English artist, best known for her sculptures, which typically take the form of casts. She won the annual Turner Prize in 1993—the first woman to win the prize....
as their winner at 2pm or, at least, at some time before the Turner; at 9.30pm, live on television, the Turner Prize was awarded to the same artist. Whiteread reluctantly collected her K Foundation winnings at just past 11pm, saying, "sarcastically, "What an honour.""
Drummond claimed the advertising campaign cost £250,000. The television advertisements cost £20,000, an amount which Scotland on Sunday
Scotland on Sunday
Scotland on Sunday is a Scottish Sunday newspaper, published in Edinburgh by The Scotsman Publications Ltd and consequently assuming the role of Sunday sister to its daily stablemate The Scotsman...
said was "carefully chosen to match the value of the Turner prize", the newspaper adding that "Copies of the invoices were supplied as evidence." Each press advert cost between £5,000 and £15,000.
The Amending of Art History
The convoy proceeded to a field patrolled by two orange-painted K Foundation Saracen armoured cars
Alvis Saracen
The FV603 Saracen is a six-wheeled armoured personnel carrier built by Alvis and used by the British army. It became a recognisable vehicle as a result of its part in the policing of Northern Ireland.-History:...
, driven by Drummond and Cauty, broadcasting the K Foundation's K Cera Cera
K Cera Cera
"K Cera Cera", a presentation of The Red Army Choir by the K Foundation , was released as a limited edition single in Israel and Palestine in November 1993...
and ABBA
ABBA
ABBA was a Swedish pop group formed in Stockholm in 1970 which consisted of Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Agnetha Fältskog...
's "Money Money Money". Silver-bearded "Mr Ball", the K Foundation's compere, directed the witnesses to nail their wad of money to a board inside a gilt frame, to assemble the K Foundation's prize. Some of the witnesses pocketed all or some of their wad, and the prize money was, according to Danny Kelly
Danny Kelly (journalist)
Danny Kelly is a music journalist, sports presenter and internet publisher. He is the former editor of the music weekly New Musical Express....
, some £9000 short. Mr Ball also directed the witnesses to "view the art": One million pounds in £50 notes, nailed to a large framed board. This was the K Foundation's first art work, Nailed To A Wall, "the first of a series of K Foundation art installations that will also include one million pounds in a skip, one million pounds on a table and several variants on the theme of Tremendous Amounts Of Folding".
Collectively, the K Foundation's money-as-art works were titled Money: A Major Body Of Cash, "seven pieces, all involving various amounts of cash nailed to, tied to or simply standing on inanimate objects". Nailed To A Wall had a reserve price of £500,000, half the face value of the cash used in its construction, which Scotland on Sundays reporter Robert Dawson Scott was "fairly confident... really was £1 million [in cash]". The catalogue entry for the artwork stated: "Over the years the face value will be eroded by inflation, while the artistic value will rise and rise. The precise point at which the artistic value will overtake the face value is unknown. Deconstruct the work now and you double your money. Hang it on a wall and watch the face value erode, the market value fluctuate, and the artistic value soar. The choice is yours."
Rachel Whiteread had already been notified of her "victory" but had refused to accept the prize or allow the K Foundation to use her name. The motorcade left the site of the amending of art-history and headed back to London, for a showdown with Whiteread on the steps of the Tate. When she again refused to accept the money, the K Foundation explained that it would be burnt. With the crowd of now very drunk witnesses looking on, a masked K Foundation operative (Gimpo) fumbled with matches and lighter fluid. At the last moment Rachel Whiteread emerged from the Tate and accepted the money, stating that she would give it as grants to needy artists.
The next day, the K Foundation's publicist, Mick Houghton, claimed that the voting for the K Foundation's award was supposed to produce a tie, to illustrate the hypocrisy of the Turner award committee, but that strangely the result had been a huge margin of victory for Whiteread. He speculated that the few thousand voters had just liked or rather disliked the sound of her name.
Defending Whiteread, Lord Palumbo told The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
that: "Talent at the highest level attracts derision. We must let the artist fail."
Whiteread's sculpture, House, was demolished on 11 January 1994.
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 TimesThe Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
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
Art Monthly
Art Monthly is a magazine of contemporary art founded in 1976 by Jack Wendler and Peter Townsend. It is based in London and has an international scope, although its main focus is on British art...
, in which she outlined her plan to donate £10,000 to Shelter
Shelter (charity)
Shelter is a registered charity in England and Scotland that campaigns to end homelessness and bad housing. It gives advice, information and advocacy to people in need, and tackles the root causes of bad housing by lobbying government and local authorities for new laws and policies to improve the...
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
David Mach
David Mach is a Scottish sculptor and installation artist.Mach's artistic style is based on flowing assemblages of mass-produced found art objects. Typically these include magazines,vicious teddy bears,newspapers, car tyres, match sticks and coat hangers...
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
John Bellany
John Bellany, CBE, RA is a Scottish painter.He was born in Port Seton. During the 1960s, he studied at Edinburgh College of Art and then at the Royal College of Art in London....
, on the other hand, said that "The emotional, artistic side of [his] nature... admire[d] the audacity and imagination, challenging art and the art manipulators. The rational side of me asks, is this the most expensive art publicity stunt
Publicity stunt
A publicity stunt is a planned event designed to attract the public's attention to the event's organizers or their cause. Publicity stunts can be professionally organized or set up by amateurs...
this century, and for whom?"
Whiteread's agent Karsten Schubert
Karsten Schubert
Karsten Schubert is an artists' representative and gallery proprietor working in England.-Karsten Schubert Limited:Karsten Schubert ran Karsten Schubert Limited, initially in collaboration, and with the backing of, Richard Salmon, from 1986 to 1991...
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
Factory Records
Factory Records was a Manchester based British independent record label, started in 1978 by Tony Wilson and Alan Erasmus, which featured several prominent musical acts on its roster such as Joy Division, New Order, A Certain Ratio, The Durutti Column, Happy Mondays, Northside and James and...
boss Tony Wilson
Tony Wilson
Anthony Howard Wilson, commonly known as Tony Wilson , was an English record label owner, radio presenter, TV show host, nightclub manager, impresario and journalist for Granada Television and the BBC....
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
Modern Review
Modern Review has been used as a name for a number of magazines:* Modern Review * Modern Review * 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 "[enjoyed the] sense of waste and sacrifice involved".
Miranda Sawyer
Miranda Sawyer
Miranda Sawyer is an English journalist and broadcaster.She grew up in Wilmslow, Cheshire with her brother Toby, who is an actor. She has a degree in Jurisprudence from Pembroke College, Oxford...
, 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
Carl Freedman
Carl Freedman is the founder of Carl Freedman Gallery . He previously worked as a writer and a curator, initially with Damien Hirst, to help pioneer the Young British Artists phenomenon.-Life and work:...
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
Stewart Home
Stewart Home is an English artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist. He is best known for his novels such as the non-narrative 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess , his re-imagining of the 1960s in Tainted Love , and earlier parodistic pulp fictions Pure Mania, Red...
was viciously supportive of the K Foundation. "The avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
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
Consumer capitalism
Consumer capitalism is a theoretical economic and political condition in which consumer demand is manipulated, in a deliberate and coordinated way, on a very large scale, through mass-marketing techniques, to the advantage of sellers....
'."
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
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
' grandiose plans for Apple Corps
Apple Corps
Apple Corps Ltd. is a multi-armed multimedia corporation founded in January 1968 by the members of The Beatles to replace their earlier company and to form a conglomerate. Its name is a pun. Its chief division is Apple Records, which was launched in the same year...
", 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
The Face (magazine)
The Face was a British music, fashion and culture monthly magazine started in May 1980 by Nick Logan.-1980s:Logan had previously created the teen pop magazine Smash Hits, and had been an editor at the New Musical Express in the 1970s before launching The Face in 1980.The magazine was influential in...
magazine's witness wrote that "The accusation that this is a tiresome Situationist gag with a whoopee cushion
Whoopee cushion
A whoopee cushion, also known as a poo-poo cushion and Razzberry Cushion, is a practical joke device, used in a form of flatulence humor, which produces a noise resembling a raspberry or human flatulence. It is made from two sheets of rubber that are glued together at the edges...
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
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
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
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
said that Jimmy Cauty, "[as the artist] responsible for a best-selling Athena
Athena (retailer)
Athena is a British art retailer, and was formerly a large retail chain, famous for its distinctive posters.-History:Athena's first shop was opened by Ole Christensen in Hampstead in July 1964, and then bought into E&O PLC, by Chairman, Douglas H. Bayle...
poster of the Hobbit
Hobbit
Hobbits are a fictional diminutive race who inhabit the lands of Middle-earth in J. R. R. Tolkien's fiction.Hobbits first appeared in the novel The Hobbit, in which the main protagonist, Bilbo Baggins, is the titular 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:
Later analysis
In a piece published in 2006, The Sunday TimesThe Sunday Times (UK)
The Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...
quoted author James F. English's description of The K Foundation's Art Award as "hostile philanthropy". Sunday Times writer Bryan Appleyard
Bryan Appleyard
Bryan Appleyard is a British journalist and author.- Career :Appleyard was educated at Bolton School and King’s College, Cambridge and after graduating with a degree in English, he became Financial News Editor and Deputy Arts Editor from 1976 to 1984 at The Times. Subsequently he became a...
added that the "K Foundation's witty exploitations of artistic greed ... are essential aspects of the prize itself. They promote the prize, reassure the organisers that, culturally speaking, they are in the thick of it and console the artists with evidence that their work provokes strong reactions. More importantly, for English, such conflicts demonstrate the autonomous nature of the event. These prizes should not be seen as any real or lasting judgment about art, but rather as things in themselves."
Some years after the award, Bill Drummond attempted to explain the K Foundation's motives, as he now saw them:
Burning
The K Foundation's art campaign, Money: A Major Body Of Cash, failed to attract major gallery interest so, on 23 August 1994, Drummond and Cauty disposed of their one million pounds in an alternate fashion: they burnt it on the Scottish island of JuraJura, Scotland
Jura is an island in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, situated adjacent and to the north-east of Islay. Part of the island is designated as a National Scenic Area. Until the twentieth century Jura was dominated - and most of it was eventually owned - by the Campbell clan of Inveraray Castle on Loch...
. (See: K Foundation Burn a Million Quid). In an interview with Drummond, Cauty and Gimpo, Gimpo admitted to harbouring guilt about the million pounds burning; that if he'd burnt Whiteread's £40,000 the million pounds burning would never have happened. "I should have burnt it. I had petrol all over the £40,000... We were due to wait until eleven o'clock until she came out, but we were told to wait another two minutes... [then] Rachel Whiteread came running out. She just grabbed the money and dragged it over the fence." Carl Freedman also wished they'd burnt Whiteread's money. "It would have been brilliant.... It would have been just totally outrageous. People would have been falling out of their-chairs, saying. 'I can't believe they just burned £40,000'".