Win some, not winsome

The artist's last boyfriend before me won what a leading white-bearded actor tonight from across the ocean described rather grandly as the world's greatest art prize by ripping open the purple envelope with Zeus-like non-grace and announcing the artist's ex-boyfriend by name. The artist was sitting next to me during all this and I registered and indeed admired her response: she was genuinely pleased for him. The last time he was nominated - and did not win - the artist sat back as a guest at his table. I was watching it all on a small black and white TV alone at our flat. The TV has changed and we are still together. No prizes for that, but we feel like winners all the same. No one really makes art to win prizes but this one is rated highly - it was rated highly then and is rated highly now - though some of it has been glazed with a kind of sugar-coated slebbiness (as in celebrity). The prize itself - named after a painter of all things - used to be for artists under 40 but is now for artists under 50. Quite generously, tonight's winner said it should simply be for artists with a pulse. As a man, it must be said, the prize-winner has always been uncomfortable around me. As an artist, however, he has often impressed, though much of his work inhabits the world of ideas only, and can as a result be like watching someone trying very hard not to dirty their hands. I think the awkwardness is genuine, however, and may in fact be part of its appeal. I also believe the man to be a true outsider, uncomfortable in his skin, and one who sets himself apart, unusually so, from the clannish principles behind the art world. This does not mean I do not think some of the work is either too obscure or yet more one-line ideas executed by others at times. But they did spend a lot of time together, the artist and the prize-winner, and when you are both visual artists in a relationship it must be very difficult. I bumped into him the other day by the railway station I use most frequently in the centre of the capital. I wrote about it that day. He even came to our wedding, which was good of him, though he was as uncomfortable with me then as he was at the station. Still, social graces alone do not a good artist make. And I warmly congratulate him, albeit anonymously, on his award.