Art With A Capital A

I wonder if you saw Wednesday's headline: "Modern Art Is Rubbish In Barbican's New Show"? A Chinese conceptual artist has shipped over two container loads of his mother's rubbish to put on display. Apparently "it helps us to understand the reality of Chinese history and culture in the 20th century". Fuck off. With a bit of luck a cleaner will shovel it down the chute.

Do you remember the news story about the sculpture left outside a prominent New York gallery? Constructed from rusty cars a passing garbage truck took it away. The happy event came to mind when travellers stole a monumental Henry Moore bronze and sold it for scrap. At least they knew there was value in it. I've seen a lot of Moore's work and I'm confident it won’t be missed. Similarly the Barbara Hepworth that was recently liberated from Dulwich Park. A masterly improvement. One by one they are disappearing.

Like Charles Saatchi's £13,000 head sculpted from frozen blood, builders unplugged the freezer and the work drained away. Next thing porters at Sothebys tore the wrapping off a chair by Christo - he who drapes whole canyons - not knowing the wrapping was the point of the thing. And to trump it all a fire at a London Art warehouse destroyed Tracey Emin’s ‘Tent’, her beach hut and the Chapman brothers 'Hell', along with a ton of similar stuff. They won’t be missed, except by those who bought them, who couldn't bear to live with them and hid them away. Never mind, their pet Artists can easily knock up some more, in fact the Chapmans have already done so, their masterpiece has been resurrected as 'Fucking Hell'.

I subscribe to the view that there's no such thing as Art, there are only well made objects which anyone may enjoy, or not, as they will. A 'Work of Art' didn't exist until the late 18th century, and their delicate appreciation - aesthetics - was invented some fifty years later, thus we are plagued with 'arbiters of taste' and their impenetrable prose. Nonsense, Art is a conspicuous attempt by the elite to elevate themselves above the rest of us. Not that I'm the first to say this, or to contend you won’t find art where you expect to find it, and it won't have Art written on it either. Give me something that entertains or informs the eye, a book illustration or a well taken photograph, a knock out film, more so if it's something the rich can't hang on their walls, or lock away in a bunker.

But I'm a fair man, elsewhere in the newspaper Charles Saatchi proposes swapping some of the nation's Turners for works we don't have. They want our great artists and we want theirs. I love Turner but that is a good idea. Just don't let Mr Moneybags do the choosing.