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Gillian Wearing's "Fuck Cilla Black" cover on Tuesday's G2: your views please

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For those who didn't see it, this week's Guardian G2 supplements have had their covers designed by a different artist. On Monday it was gormless Gormley while on Tuesday Ms Wearing offered a white cover with the words

FUCK

CILLA

BLACK

written in black marker. It was a comment on the leading article inside, i.e. about said Cilla quitting Blind Date and how she was not aggressive and in-yer-face enough for today's TV. It prompted "hundreds" of comments from disgruntled Guardian readers; the sample printed in Wednesday's edition was in itself a mini-masterpiece, worthy of Viz.

Did anyone who saw it think that it did stand up as art? Was anyone "offended" or, like me, did you just shrug?

― Marcello Carlin, Friday, 10 January 2003 10:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Fuck Gillian Wearing.

(Sorry, I had to do it)

― kate, Friday, 10 January 2003 10:13 (twenty-two years ago)

*shrug*, yeah.

― michael wells (michael w.), Friday, 10 January 2003 10:15 (twenty-two years ago)

the lard hexagon one was embarassingly awful.

― Alan (Alan), Friday, 10 January 2003 10:18 (twenty-two years ago)

I certainly didn't understand the point of it until I read Wednesday's articles on it. Not that I thought about it much.

I quite liked yesterday's lard hexagon, although I was pissed off that it interfered with the TV listings.

― caitlin (caitlin), Friday, 10 January 2003 10:22 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/gallery/0,8542,869643,00.html

(the covers)

― zebedee, Friday, 10 January 2003 10:25 (twenty-two years ago)

"The last time a one-off Guardian incident caused such public outrage was when the paper ran both its crosswords in the same section.

The move provoked 300 complaints, many from couples who liked to do the crosswords separately."

doesn't this tell you all you need to know?

― zebedee, Friday, 10 January 2003 10:30 (twenty-two years ago)

I'd rank them Gormley > Chapmans > Tyson > Wearing > Hockney. I think the Gormley one is beautiful and appropriate and the best by some distance, and the Hockney is tedious.

As for the question, the Wearing cover made me smile. It seems a fairly uninteresting route to being provocative, though.

― Tim (Tim), Friday, 10 January 2003 10:35 (twenty-two years ago)

i didnt like any of them really. the wearing one was the best, but things like this make you realise it would be much better if it was on the front page of the paper rather than the front page of the supplement

― gareth (gareth), Friday, 10 January 2003 10:38 (twenty-two years ago)

the chapmans' one is lame.

― michael wells (michael w.), Friday, 10 January 2003 10:45 (twenty-two years ago)

leave me alone

― Tim (Tim), Friday, 10 January 2003 10:50 (twenty-two years ago)

I haven't seen today's yet, but I'd rank the other four in the same order as Tim. I loved the Gormley (it was what mainly prompted me to wander down to the British Museum yesterday, to look at his drawings - including one old one really very like that cover), and I liked the Tyson too, and the fact that he messed with the back page too (though the editors understandably chickened out of it).

I thought the Wearing was okay, but the defence of it the next day by one of their arts journalists was better than the cover itself - but I do think, often, that if such a strong and interesting case can be made for a work, that probably means the work itself is pretty interesting too. Often, not always.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 10 January 2003 13:36 (twenty-two years ago)

The key to the Chapmans' one is the cute little bunny.

― Tim (Tim), Friday, 10 January 2003 13:38 (twenty-two years ago)

The thing was Gareth that the front of the paper had something really innocuous on its front cover - "Gillian Wearing on Cilla Black - turn to G2 for some grebt debate" (OK I paraphrase) which made the front cover funnier. Basically it was a 'shrug' - the readers' responses section was hilarious but why don't they just ignore these people rather than run another 800 words of handwringing from the 'Reader's Editor'? They also missed a trick by not reviewing Wife Swap, on the night before and a valuable contribution to any debate on swearing and the standards of TV methinks.

― Tom (Groke), Friday, 10 January 2003 13:43 (twenty-two years ago)

I thought it was a bit lame and pointless. I don't know if thee artist's intent was actually as stated in thee following day's paper, but it did give off a bit ov a "money for old rope"-type of ambience for me, like "what is the least thing I can do that I can get away with". I was looking forward to thee chapman brothers' piece, but I didn't much like that earlier. Tracey Emin rules. Her take on the Saturday magazine (which I generally find much, much better than G2) a coupla months ago was really good I thought.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Friday, 10 January 2003 13:44 (twenty-two years ago)

i read the guff on the chapmans' cover and they use the word "problematise".

― michael wells (michael w.), Friday, 10 January 2003 13:44 (twenty-two years ago)

It's often best not to read what the Chapmans write, I'll agree.

― Tim (Tim), Friday, 10 January 2003 13:46 (twenty-two years ago)

Wife Swap got a mention in some column the other day and i think in the "last night's telly" thing. the only problem was that the entire column was dire - about as much effort to write as i put into my ILE postings (which is to say less than usual right now, but practically nil)

― Alan (Alan), Friday, 10 January 2003 13:47 (twenty-two years ago)

The best bit in today's was the follow-up interview asking what the artists thought of the Guardian offices - 'bloody hell it's pokey and you have to actually work ew'

― Tom (Groke), Friday, 10 January 2003 13:47 (twenty-two years ago)

I was disappointed after reading Monday's (I'd agree that the Hockney cover wasn't that exciting) paper which had an excellent interview with Hockney about art vs photography that the remaining days' features didn't have much discussion about art, pretty much just the covers themselves and a small justification for them (barring the reaction to the Wearing piece a day later).

I was actually looking forward to a week full of discussion about the nature of art etc.

"The best bit in today's was the follow-up interview asking what the artists thought of the Guardian offices - 'bloody hell it's pokey and you have to actually work ew'"

It's a good job they didn't come up to see us poor fuckers in advertising where, of course, we work really hard all the time.

― James Ball (James Ball), Friday, 10 January 2003 14:22 (twenty-two years ago)

"fuck cilla black"?!?

No thanks!

― nathalie (nathalie), Friday, 10 January 2003 14:23 (twenty-two years ago)

the prob with the wearing one was the far from innocuous line on the front of the main paper saying "gillian wearing bids farewell to cilla black (not suitable for under16s or dr kim howells)" which together with the pretty bland article it was all alluding to completely fucked up the emphasis of the cover, which was a rebuttal of the tedious blah shockvalues it got subsequently charged with

if i was wearing i might be furious, but in a way it works even better with the mumbled apologetic mess in its wake

― zemko (bob), Friday, 10 January 2003 16:19 (twenty-two years ago)

why did i use the word rebuttal i HATE that word

― zemko (bob), Friday, 10 January 2003 16:20 (twenty-two years ago)

zemko i like yr cute rebuttal

― auteur theorist s (mark s), Friday, 10 January 2003 16:32 (twenty-two years ago)

My order is no longer the same as Tim's - I liked the Tyson better than the Chapmans, though I like that better than the Wearing.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 10 January 2003 18:29 (twenty-two years ago)

Hockney (Andrew Marr) > Wearing > Tyson = Gromley = Chapmans = 0

― Graham (graham), Friday, 10 January 2003 19:24 (twenty-two years ago)

wallace and gromley

― mark s (mark s), Friday, 10 January 2003 19:25 (twenty-two years ago)

'.'? <----! *.*?
O !-- "zemko i like yr cute rebuttal" ---<-- v

― zemko (bob), Friday, 10 January 2003 19:43 (twenty-two years ago)

'.'
~

― zemko (bob), Friday, 10 January 2003 19:45 (twenty-two years ago)

I thought the weakness of the Wearing cover was its execution. Why was it daubed graffiti style? It would have made more sense in normal TV-executive style print, or, frankly, as a standard G2 cover headline with something like 'How TV got nasty' underneath it. Ian Katz said the next day that they would never have used 'fuck' in a normal headline as it would fall foul of the Guardian's guidelines on gratutious swearing and that the fact that the G2 logo was painted by Wearing too rather than printed should have signalled a different context; one that distanced the words from the paper's usual editorial. I did not agree with this. The art of modern features headlines frequently involves provocative statements or questions implicitly placed in an imagined/abstract speaker's mouth, just as 'FUCK CILLA BLACK' was supposed to be. And why does 'art' have to be signposted in such a lame way as a sloppily painted 'G2'?

― N. (nickdastoor), Monday, 13 January 2003 02:59 (twenty-two years ago)

i like how calm and wonderful hockneys images seem, and how he no longer needs to take the photos or make things bigger or more erotic or more about class and money or geography. (not that these were bad things to make art of)
the image seems to be connected to his return to england from socal, originally to pose for lucien freud, he has a big well lit studio near hackney, and walks thru the park and he seems happy to be an old man coming home. this is not a bad thing.

― anthony easton (anthony), Monday, 13 January 2003 06:19 (twenty-two years ago)

Tom E, I disagree with you. I think Wearing made an utter ass of herself with her pathetic waste of space and opportunity. I hope she feels very ashamed, and learns something from it: probably she will not.

I think the whole week's 'experiment' was pretty much a dud, but Wearing took it to a new level.

― the pinefox, Tuesday, 14 January 2003 14:14 (twenty-two years ago)

pinefox you are sounding like a corrs fan (n.b. this is not necessarily a negative).

― Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 14 January 2003 14:20 (twenty-two years ago)

''pinefox you are sounding like a corrs fan (n.b. this is not necessarily a negative).''

oh yes it is!

― Iggy pop's biggest fan (jdesouza), Tuesday, 14 January 2003 17:31 (twenty-two years ago)

And why does 'art' have to be signposted in such a lame way as a sloppily painted 'G2'?

It has to be separated from poetry (i.e. a poem that reads "Fuck /Cilla /Black").

― Eyeball Kicks (Eyeball Kicks), Wednesday, 15 January 2003 01:30 (twenty-two years ago)


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