Charlotte Prodger's art old hat? Kids book puts critic straight '“ leader comment

Turner Prize winner Charlotte Prodger (centre) with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (left) and Tate director Maria Balshaw during the award ceremony at Tate Britain in London (Picture: Victoria Jones/PA Wire)

The children's book Old Hat, New Hat, tells the story of a bear who decides to buy a new hat.

Each one the bear tries doesn’t seem quite right – one’s too silly, another too red, a third too wrinkly, on and on it goes, but then, amid the pile of rejected hats, there’s the perfect fit – the old hat. “Just right,” says the bear and walks off.

Such a simple philosophical idea may have been missed by the art critic Waldemar Januszczak, given he decided to criticise the Charlotte Prodger’s Turner Prize-winning video as “old hat”, adding that he wished people would “stop thinking there is still something avant-garde about film and video”.

Art is not about the format; it is about the meaning. And the Glasgow-based artist’s highly personal account of coming out as gay in rural Scotland is a work that will have meaning to many people in this country and beyond.

Januszczak’s criticism also seems to suggest that a painting – perhaps the oldest hat in the art world, dating back to ancient cave paintings – could not be “avant-garde”. The Scotsman begs to differ and offers its congratulations to a new leading light in Scotland’s arts scene.