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Pickled animals versus the Mona Lisa? I'd say Leonardo wins hands down. I think a lot of modern "artists" are trying to get over their lack of talent and creativity by indulging in the absurd.
Chang Park, UK

Tom Wolfe wrote a wonderful book detailing the art world's woes in "The Painted Word." Art is now the selling of garbage, with its meaning more important than its quality - it is anti- borgoise, but also anti-humanity. We need more serious artists, and fewer going for governmental grants.
B Browning, USA

I think to say 'art has lost its way' is paradoxical. The best art has always come from being adventurous and tried new methods. To retain the excitement and exploration of reactions and emotions which is what a piece of art should do is all part of the basic concept of art. Perhaps the traditional notion of art being for pleasure and just 'pretty pictures' is a little lame when artists have the chance to actually explore whole philosophies rather than producing meaningless pictures. If anything, art is finding its way.
Jim Horner, United Kingdom

It is not art that has lost its way but the society of which it is an expression. Confusion in values, including the meaning of life, which is characteristic of the modern cybernetic world, finds its reflection in art as it does in individual and societal life in general. The result tends to be withdrawal from one's former attachments to be replaced by general apathy towards future expectations. Therefore, art has not lost its way but found the aesthetic equivalent of the culture's condition. Deprived of inherent values, art can then be appreciated primarily by virtue of its technical performance.
Heimo Mantynen, UK

For some artists the only way to get noticed is to shock and provoke, rather than rely on producing good art which may get lost among the many good pieces around. Some artists have tried so hard to be original that the only thing that can positively be said about their work is that it is different. Can't we encourage the many enthusiastic artists around not only to produce art which pleases and inspires, but also endures beyond the immediate desire for something new and different.
Robert Cooper, United Kingdom

The more renowned practitioners of modern or conceptual art have achieved notoriety purely through the promotion of an idea and not for any technical ability or intrinsic talent. Such ideas are not the domain of a highly perceptive clique but are within the capability of the vast majority of the populus. In the absence of a non subjective measure of the competence behind a 'work of art' there can be no logical ranking of merit. Proponents of modern art celebrate this as an admirable facet of their discipline and exploit this anomaly to gain reward without the investment of commitment, devotion and time to develop a proficiency in the production of their exhibits. No other field is subject to this frankly contemptible failure of self regulation and the art world has justifiably attracted derision and hostility for its folly.
Dr. Martin Moran, England

Congratulations to Gillian Wearing, this year's Turner Prize Winner. By comparison to the "dead" and unoriginal efforts of previous winners (Damien Hurst par excellence), her art is vibrant, exciting and witty. Where is the wit in a still life - more accurately still "death" - of a cow or sheep in a glass jar? I also liked the other interactive bench of one of the other candidates; I sincerely hope that this is evidence of the art pendulum swinging back to sanity.
Patrick Lee, United Kingdom

Most of the gallery fodder is designed to shock; it's appeal will fade as we become accustomed to each excess. The important thing to remember about all art is that it must appeal in some way to the viewer / listener. If it doesn't, then it is not art for you. If it requires interpretation, then it probably only exists in the mind of the interpreter (unless after consideration, you agree with his/her interpretation).
Patrick Litton, United Kingdom

As can be clearly seen paralleled in not only other areas of the "Arts" but also in society generally, "art" is undergoing an almost inevitable period of extremely rapid change. Follow the history, from thousands of years of cave art, to five hundred years of canvas art, to a few decades of conceptual art, to but a few years in which "anything goes". This is a highly exciting time, but so very ephemeral. How many of these new works will physically exist in a few decades time?
Tony Whyte, England

Yes I think that modern art has lost its way.The Turner prize does not have to be given unless the artists deserve it. Think what will happen if Oxbridge started accepting students with D and E grades just because no one with good grades applied. In my humble opinion the Turner Prize should be withheld and the money accumulated until the artists wake up and give the world and the nation real art even if it happens once in a decade. You do not have to give the Turner prize just for the sake of it.
Dr. K.M.Latif, United Kingdom

Art is the expression of deeper meanings, emotions and shared human experience by means other than standard language. That is what art is about, let's get with it instead of being stuffy and old fashioned.
Mike Holt, United Kingdom

Modern art is needed by the industry that surrounds it. For example if the Turner prize was not contentious people such as the lady from the Tate magazine would be out of a job, as their function is to explain it to the world in general. Modern art really means the post Cezanne job of saying "this is not bad, this is good". Art has not lost it's way but has been hijacked by aliens from Planet Curator.
Endel White, USA

Art has most certainly lost its way... The simplest example for this would be that, we don't see more qualitative art these days. Why do paintings of Vincent Van Gough sell at enormous prices these days? Just because they are of a better quality than todays paintings?? Somehow, the number of good artists seems to have been going down.
Sulove Bothra, aged 15, India

Modern art has become little more than another consumer product, aimed at a society that would rather bask in illusionary kudos than admit that most so-called modern 'art' is no more nor less than pretentious rubbish. A society which dare not evaluate the evidence of their own eyes without the dubious advice of critics and media. The result is that 'artists' must increasingly find new limits for how far they can cynically test the patience and gullibility of people for whom they clearly have nothing but contempt. Most modern art is produced by people of no talent and few motor skills. That it attracts crowds is no great advertisement - many of the viewers are there to be seen there.
John Luby, Scotland

If you stand in front of an artefact with wonder, not being able to relate to it in any way, You can justifiably doubt its value as a work of art. Maybe we should start searching for true art outside the exhibitions and in the hearts of the people.
Babak Hodjat, Japan

To say that 'art has lost its way' is to assume that 'art' has a mind of its own. Well, it doesn't. The problem today is that many of the practitioners of art do not have a mind of their own. Nor have they the discipline and the burning desire to strike out and do something unique, imaginative and... well... brilliant. There is to much faddism, too much imitation which results in art that resembles a too watered down soup. Art, as we know it, will improve only when the viewing public demands of the artists that they put forth their finest creative effort.
Donald McKay, USA

Art has been called the "shock of the new" it would be a sad day for society if we lost that excitement.
J McInespie, USA

Art has lost its way since the introduction of photography, television and mass communications generally. Now we have two things going on: the real artists who try to produce work which expresses something important; and the confidence tricksters who work on the gullibility of the public by passing off rubbish as art.
Robert, UK

While "art" in the purest sense is created from personal, internal, unquantifiable drives, "art" still needs to be a voice, to communicate. What possible good is something if its audience doesn't know what it is, or can't relate to it? If what is created doesn't make sense to its intended audience, then it hasn't succeeded as "art."
Tim Laitinen, USA

Art may reflect life, but like an image in a fractured mirror, it is often difficult to see the pattern.
S.Minhinnick, New Zealand

The day art panders to what a small elitist minority thinks it should be is the day art truly loses its way.
Benedict Brook, UK

As the old cliche says "I don't know much about art...." but reading about these exhibits here today, they sound really exciting. I feel that I want to rush to the Tate and see them today! Unfortunately I don't live in London, which is another issue! Like a lot of people I expect, I don't regularly visit art galleries, but when I do I usually find lots to enjoy. If 'controversy' does make people flock to a show, perhaps that's a good thing. Surely art shouldn't be restricted to prescribed forms? I heard the other day about the TV commercial maker who has become an artist. Why isn't a well-made, exciting TV commercial considered art?
Dennis Smithers, UK

How can art lose is its way? It doesn't have one. ART IS! More to the point, it is, as beauty, in the eye of the beholder (or in the case of music, the ear of the listener). I may not appreciate it, I may not like its form, I may not like its "message," but I cannot deny it is art. To the extent it is appreciated by others, it will remain art. Only that which is not appreciated by others can truly be said to be without artistic value. I cannot say for others what art is and I will not have others saying for me what art is. We must all be content with a simple reality: Art is.
Stephen Anderson, USA

I don't believe art has lost its way. I think that the work being described as "art" is a more diverse range than ever before. This leads traditionalists to proclaim that it is not art, which in my opinion is wrong. Art is surely about the 'doing' aspect, not what the category it fits into.
J Brady, UK

What do you mean "has art lost its way"? Who is to determine the "way of art". Doesn't art create its way through the accumulative production of people. The "shock artists" as you tend to call them are just the symptom of a new way being created.
Suhail Abul Samid, Jordan

Art (inc. music & film) has certainly lost its way. Most notably because the art which is being lauded is the product of instant solutions and rarely these days, leaves the viewer in awe of the artist's talent. It is often the result of hype and decreasing talent, which offers sparse inspiration.
James Fletcher, UK

No, art has not lost its way. It just needs to find a new way to express itself. Like all postmodern art, film and literature there is no longer original creativity. So a way has to be found to recreate, or reinvent, what already exists in a new, refreshing, controversial way. That's why the artists that have been nominated for the Turner Prize were nominated. In America, art is getting old and tired, as is America. As art historian, Robert Hughes, recently stated "The model of progress seems played out."
Lesley Brown-Felts, UK

Though the Turner Prize has its faults, foremost amongst which is the way it creates false celebrities out of one or two young artists to the detriment of their peers, it is still serving a valuable role in raising the profile of contemporary and conceptual art in the UK.
Benedict Davies, UK

This seems a silly question from over here. Art is inanimate and so cannot "lose its way". First, what is the "way" which has been lost? Second, which of us has "lost it"? Perhaps artists such as those who have "made the cut" are trying to find, on our behalf, a way that we have lost collectively. The history of human consciousness tends, in my view, more towards an enterprise of "finding" than of "losing". Admittedly, when such artifacts as a particular kind of civilization -- such as the one now passing whose end we are calling "The Machine Age" -- begin disintegrating, then both the foreground and background seem equally dominated by rubbish. Like it or not, however, artists are among the few -- not those of us who would hark back -- who do eventually find the way, as distasteful to the rest of us as such foraging may be. Perhaps the offensive works should encourage the culturati to emerge from their cacoons and to begin applying indignation to the creation once again of human dignity.
John Grassi, USA

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