sixball

modern art is rubbish

The planets aligned last weekend and we took the chance to take a mad touristic dash around London (why is everyone in London or Edinburgh lately?).

The weather was fab. Some of the attractions, less so.

Walking along the South Bank, the place was littered with ‘living statues’ or whatever the hell they’re called. There’s a gap as wide as the Thames between a professional mime artist and some silver-sprayed knob standing still with their hand out.

And then there’s the Tate Modern. It had a big celebration of Street Art on, advertised by having one side of their ginormous building decorated with edgy pieces in that style. Nice idea but it still felt kind of fake. You knew these pieces were commissioned, that they would peel off in a couple of hours and if you took so much as a stub of chalk to the same wall they’d be down on your creative arse like a ton of bricks.

Anyway, we should have stayed outside. The inside was populated by the sort of vacuous crap that gives modern art a bad name. The only debate that is provoked is how the hell anybody is convinced to buy into this. I think I saw a Pollock that might look nice on our stairwell but then that’s just my whimsy.

Here’s my totally scientific test to determine whether something is art. Remove the artist name and bollocksy interpretation then surround with thoughtless random crap. If the piece doesn’t stand out to a representative sample of humans then it isn’t worth the canvas. It’s a kind of aesthetic Turing test, you see.