David by Sam Taylor-Wood

The National Portrait Gallery commissioned Sam Taylor-Wood in to produce a portrait of the most famous footballer in the world.

(Edited highlights of the panel's review taken from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight Review.)

PAUL MORELY:
It's the question that's on everybody's lips, did he or didn't he sleep through this one-hour and seven minutes of him.

WARK:
Did he?

MORLEY:
I think he did. It doesn't matter if he did or he didn't, that's part of the fakery of the whole thing. It's one of the reasons I love it so much. I've finally found a place to worship. It's this wonderful intersection of fame and art and sport and business and religion and advertising. I just think it's an absolutely wonderful work of argument. I love the way that people were so excited about seeing it. It's been mobbed by some people. I love the idea that throughout all of this chaos in Beckham's life at the moment, with everything that's going on, he is sleeping through it. I think that's fantastic. And then when you wonder when you see how beautiful he is, that he is a sleeping beauty. Who is going to wake him up? Is it Victoria, Rebecca, the kids, is it Sven, Ronaldo or Abramovich? That's the beautiful part of it. Who will wake him up?

WILLIAMS:
He is beautiful. This is pornographic in the best possible sense. In that, he is made available to all-comers and prevents himself for the camera with some sort of knowledge, he seems to exude a knowledge he has been looked at. That is absolutely fine.

ROSIE BOYCOTT:
You are allowed to sleep in the bed with him. That is what's so wonderful about it. If you lay on your side you would be right beside him, you could see him as the lover. That is really clever of her. I think it's incredibly clever. I like it when she says she looked at him and knows he has been photographed and pictured from every single way that this man can be done, what can I do? This is so smart. It's just so anti-the physicality of the man. Yet, it's incredibly thoughtful.

MORLEY:
We don't see his legs, the most important part of him in a way.

WARK:
Nor does he turn away from us at any point.

MORLEY:
Even in his sleep he knows what he's doing.

WILLIAMS:
We see the hand going off camera and down below, there is a sense that there's a lower body.

WARK:
He doesn't snort, he doesn't snore, he didn't dribble.

BOYCOTT:
He looks like a good sleeping companion.

MORLEY:
It looks like he is taking a free kick. It's immaculate. He puts swerve on it.

WARK:
Once you've accepted that he is a thing of beauty, or whatever, if that's your shtick, once you have accepted that, you're not expected to stay for an hour and seven minutes.

MORLEY:
You must!

WARK:
If it had been someone, for example, like Lucien Freud or Jonathan Miller or someone who has an intrinsically interesting face, do you think that would have sustained for all of that time, would that have sustained you even more?

BOYCOTT:
Not really, no. I wouldn't have liked to see that, I think she was smart because you have sort of run out of options with Beckham in a very short space of time. At the end of the day he's a very young guy . And when you go out and you look at the rest of the portraits around there, there are older people, they're richer faces, they've got many more dimensions to them. Ultimately, portraits are about looking into people's eyes. This is what is so curious about this one. Of course, you didn't see his eyes at all.

WARK:
What I thought, because she's just such a brilliant photographer, is that apparently she did that by taking a couple of extra lights out of a standard lamp and just leaving one of the bulbs in, and it just looks beautiful.

WILLIAMS:
It does. Yeah. It exudes this kind of classical sense of self but I think that's also helped by the title, if he had been christened Kevin it wouldn't have that kind of Renaissance quality.

MORELY:
I think it should be in a booth in every high street. You go in for a moment of contemplation.

BOYCOTT:
Paul, do you think it will be around in 50 years?

MORLEY:
I think it will be around for centuries, I think it's a really important work of art. I do.

WILLIAMS:
Particularly for women. It was the case when I sat there for my stint, two thirds of the viewers were women of a certain age: it's Snow White for girls.