My alternative 2009 Turner prize shortlist

As a juror on this year's prize, I just hope the shortlist will live up to its best traditions of championing the avant garde

Penis mightier than the shortlist? Photograph: KNS News

Is the teenager who painted a 60ft penis on the roof of his parents' house eligible for the Turner prize? Well, it wasn't in an exhibition and only got noticed in a satellite photograph, so perhaps not. I'll have to put it in the alternative Turner pile, along with Alan Moore's comics.

As the 2009 Turner jury – on which I'm serving – gears up for the shortlisting meeting in just under a month, it's time to put away childish things. Half the fun of the whole affair has been saying, when confronted with any example of almost anything, that it was worthy of the Turner prize. (Anyway, it was fun for me: the smiles of listeners seemed to become increasingly forced.)

The strange thing is that in reality I have no desire to subvert the Turner in any way whatsoever; rather I just hope this year's shortlist will live up to its best traditions, by which I mean championing the avant garde in a country that used to be notorious for its conservatism. Hopefully there will be some surprises in the shortlist, but there's no danger (and I don't know if this will come as good or bad news) of it suddenly being filled with watercolourists.

Still, it is a shame that some artists can't be included, or anyway are unlikely to be, just because they don't exist within the framework of art as we know it. So here is my alternative Turner shortlist of things that are sort of Turner-worthy without being eligible …

Cy Twombly for being the greatest living painter. Why oh why did this American genius choose to settle in Rome rather than Essex, and be 80, 30 years over the limit for the Turner? Otherwise he'd be on that list. Also: graffiti artist Cartrain for irritating Damien Hirst; UNESCO for speaking up against Britain's betrayal of its historic monuments; the Royal Bank of Scotland for its radical Marxist performance art (you see how annoying it's been for people who had to hear me say this stuff all year?); all the people who built those snowmen in February. I could go on.

Anyway, now for the real shortlist. Now, what was that penis kid's name?
Posted by Jonathan Jones Wednesday 25 March 2009 16.30 GMT guardian.co.uk