Turner: Always Contemporary is a contentious title, but the effort that goes into proving it is what makes this exhibition of Turner and his perpetual contemporaries work.
Jeff Koons’ 2015 sculpture, ‘Gazing Ball (Turner Ancient Rome)’, is your first introduction to the exhibition. It’s direct, but it puts you right in Turner’s sublime world. You, whoever you may be. And that’s not just appropriate to this show, but much of the story of Turner that’s been used to refocus public views on him as a human being over recent years.
Turner grew up in a modest home, but far from poverty. His accent was all that really gave away his childhood geography, thanks to an entrepreneurial father who supported him throughout his life, acting as his agent well beyond Turner’s reputation requiring one. Part of why that’s still fascinating today, is that the Royal Academy was such an elite institution that even a confident painter with a reasonable reputation struggled to be accepted in his early career due mostly to being lower middle, rather than upper middle class.
In ‘Gazing Ball’, Koons uses the poetry of Turner’s life to present the idea that he was and remains a symbol of social mobility in the art world. He does.
For the 19th Century art nerds through, it is not Koons that should draw you here, its Ruskin. One piece, tucked quietly at the end of the exhibition, in which John Ruskin, the maker of honest opinion in the 1800s, paints after Turner. The drawing is an ideal representation of Ruskin’s permanent desire to understand the art world he critiqued, but something he rarely did unless he thought it would be of direct benefit to his students.
Basically, if Ruskin was copying your work, you’d done something right in his eyes. Some of that, possibly, came too late for Turner, who had already been insulted, celebrated, rejected and rejoiced in a rhythmic pattern by the Royal Academy. Ruskin, thirty years Turner’s junior, instead, is possibly more worth crediting for the longevity of Turner’s reputation; in many ways, the reason this exhibition exists.
Damien Hirst, Maggie Hambling and Jeff Koons throwing their weight behind Turner as a key inspiration might not sound like much. But consider their own journeys as painters, sculptors or disruptors.
There’s a quote from Thomas Paine that is still taught to most art students: “The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime becomes ridiculous and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again” (The Age of Reason, 1795). It was used and misquoted throughout Turner’s career as insult and praise in equal measure.
Each and every one of the contemporary painters in this exhibition (used to either highlight Turner’s ongoing influence, or his direct relation to other painters of his day) could have the same quote attached.
In fact, one visitor over my shoulder tutted at Hirst’s sharks in formaldehyde, ‘Two Similar Swimming Forms in Endless Motion’(1993), and literally called them “ridiculous. Insulting to him to have them here.” In a quote I found so funny I wrote it down in front of him.
The fact that that snobbery persists is why this exhibition is important. Despite these modern viewers seeing Turner as an inarguable manifestation of painterly talent, he wasn’t seen as that then. The paintings he spent most of his life being praised for were the boring ones you see at the beginning of the exhibition, not the expressive energetic representations of the elements he is best known for.
With all of that in mind I implore everyone and anyone to visit this show with an open mind. Explore Turner as a representation of an artist breaking the mould, who created an art world where self-belief and the confidence to persist your way to success remains the making of most reputable artists.
So yes, Turner is always contemporary, but only if you’re willing to accept what contemporary is today. This exhibition goes to great lengths to prove that, and it succeeds.
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Turner: Always Contemporary is open at Walker Art Gallery until 22nd February 2026
Words, Patrick Kirk-Smith