Tracy Emin has annoyed me this week by saying.....

In an interview to be broadcast next week, she said:

I could never be a mother and be a good artist.

Well I've got news for you Tracy - you aren't a good artist; you are a successful one which is not the same thing at all.
But I would not expect anyone with her limited ability in English to understand that. Just because there are a sufficient number of fools with money who are willing to part with it to purchase the kind of abominable rubbish she produces to garner a good lifestyle, does not imply any kind of artistic ability.
I don't know whom I disrespect most: sham artists like Tracy Emin, the people who buy the work and thus support her continuing in it or the so-called art experts who believe that something becomes art simply on their say so.

It's Cherie Blair but is it art?

What is the nature of art? It's a question which intrigues me a lot. I always find it strange that something which can be so readily quantified in terms of value can also be so subjective.

Take this recent portrait (inset) of Cherie Blair for instance. And I mean please take it out of my sight!
Admittedly the artist, Adam Birtwistle, did not have a very appealing subject to start with - Cherie Blair is one of the least attractive women in public life. In fact I think she is even less visually attractive than the Bride of Wildenstein herself.

However Birtwhistle has succedded in making her even uglier with a few splodges of paint and, no doubt several days or weeks of work. And as far as I'm concerned it is still not art.

I created the main picture in a few minutes in Photoshop. I know which I'd rather hang on my wall and which I'd rather pay money for. That said, it still does not make my masterpiece into art by any stretch of the word. So is the definition of art then simply a matter of how much work has been put into its creation?

But suppose Photoshop had never been invented and I had to write the software before I could transform Ms Blair into the masterpiece you see before you. It would have taken me months or even years to achieve and still the end result would not have been art.

How can you vandalise something that is rubbish to begin with

I'm increasingly coming to believe that artists, art collectors and art critics inhabit a different world from the rest of us.

Above is a painting by Mark Rothko which is reckoned to have a value of £50 million.
It was innocently hanging in the Tate Modern (where else?) when it was allegedly vandalised by a looney called Vladimir Umanets who daubed his name on it in black paint in the name of "Yellowism" But why not in yellow? Well I said he was a looney.
He has said that there are precedents for artists signing other artist's work and cites Damien Hirst as an example. He's got a point there!

This is how Vladimir describes Yellowism:

Yellowism is not art, and Yellowism isn’t anti-art. It’s an element of contemporary visual culture. It’s not an artistic movement.
It’s not art, it’s not reality, it’s just Yellowism. It can’t be presented in a gallery of art, it can be presented only in a Yellowistic chambers

Strangely, if I close my eyes and concentrate really hard I can almost get what he means. I think he's saying that yellow is a colour!
Whatever. He's now been charged with vandalising the above work. Apparently it took the police a couple of days to actually serve the warrant so it seems they had trouble deciding if he actually vandalised anything.

But all that is beside the point really. I cannot see how this painting called Black On Maroon can possibly be worth £50 million.
Below is my take on it:

It took me about 2 minutes with Photoshop but if somebody wants to give me a few quid I could do them something in paint and canvas to hang on their wall in a few hours.

Maybe a Mark Rothko is worth £50 million because he's dead. Well frankly all this arty farty crap makes me feel so depressed that I can't rule out suicide myself!

How can it be art if it looks like it's been done by a drunk with a paintbrush?

Few things make me as peevish as being told that something is art when it blatantly is no such thing.
To me the abomination that is known as the angel of the North is just a load of scrap metal. I don't care that thousands of Geordies love it. I've never met a Geordie who has given me the slightest inkling that they have any artistic taste whatever.
I loathe those statues which now litter the sands of Morecambe Bay. And this is my point. These things are an eyesore to me. I wouldn't mind if their creators confined the exhibition of their puerile rubbish to galleries - I don't have to see them there. But to plonk them in the middle of a piece of scenery without asking everybody who might ever want go there, is plainly offensive and intrusive.
And here is the latest piece of crap to be committed in the name of so-called art.
The Zig Zag Road is a tarmac trackway that leads from the A24 to the summit of Box Hill in Surrey. From there you can look out over miles of the green and pleasant land that is the South Downs. I used to live near there many years ago and it was a good place to find some tranquility for the mind and relaxation for the eyes. In short it is a lovely spot.
But the idiot London 2012 Festival committee in partnership with the National Trust (who really should know better) commissioned a fuckwit called Richard Long to produce something to interact with the landscape there. And the result was this 328 ft long obscenity committed in long lasting and hard wearing bright white road marking paint.
How is that art? The only form of interactivity that it inspires in me is a prolonged session with a blow torch and paint scrapers.