ABOVE: detail from The Hypocrisy of Myners by Mark D, an honorary member of the Stuckists, a group of contemporary anti-conceptual figurative painters who have been vocal in their outrage about the Tate’s acquisition of a work by one of its trustees.

Richard Dorment, the Telegraph’s art critic, wrote a column in yesterday’s paper defending the Tate Modern against accusations of impropriety in purchasing Chris Ofili’s The Upper Room. Ofili was, at the time of the purchase, a trustee on the Tate’s board of directors, and the coziness of the deal has angered many. (Most outspoken in their anger have been the Stuckists, a group of “Remodernist” painters who reject the lofty conceptualism of much of the current Tate philosophy; the Turner Prize is a favourite target. Stuckist co-founder Charles Thomson was even so kind as to comment on our little entry on the subject from last week.) Dorment says that the scale and the high quality of The Upper Room completely justify the price that the Tate paid, and that many other institutions would have snapped it up for much more if they had been given the chance. In that sense, Dorment says, the Tate got a bargain.

Certainly some people have been irked by the £700,000 paid for the work, and it is, no matter what scale one chooses to measure it on, a lot of money. Dorment argues, and we find it convincing enough, that Ofili worked on the piece, essentially with no other income, for about four years, and that had he chosen to split the paintings up and sell them off, he could have gotten much more overall. We’ve said before that we believe artists need to get paid what their work is worth, and at the going market rate, the Tate probably did get the installation for a reasonable price. But for God’s sake, that’s not the point. The problem is twofold: first, you don’t buy stuff, whether an installation piece or a shopping cart full of doorknobs, from someone who sits on your board of directors. It just isn’t done. No matter how careful everyone was, and regardless of whether Ofili left the room or plugged his ears when the board discussed the purchase, public institutions can’t get away with that kind of thing. Second, Ofili was publicly encouraging other artists to donate their work to the Tate for nothing while his agent was wheedling the board to raise more than £100,000 from private donors to seal the deal. First rule of Public Relations, Tatesters: it’s not what really happened, it’s what people perceive happened, and in this case it stinks.

LINK: Telegraph > How Tate got the bargain of the century