Nothing and nobody epitomises my love/hate relationship with art quite like an old school friend I bumped into the other day.
You know the kind: well-rehearsed cliches tumble off the tongue like blobs of mercury, leaving you with a mouthful of sawdust and an overwhelming urge to commit a seriously violent crime.
Why can’t I bullshit like that in good conscience, you berate yourself while feeling like an old hypocrite, and rightly so.
Of course, it’s not entirely his fault my scepticism about The Art World has assumed epic proportions.
I blame this creeping alienation mainly on the pervasiveness of money and snobby, elitist- driven pretence. (I thought I’d better not use the word bullshit twice in the first half dozen paragraphs, but apparently not everyone exercises such discretion.)
“Don’t let those bullshit artists spoil your innate desire to express yourself creatively,” the unrestrained but well meaning wife chimes in with a cliché of her own, before adding: “Not after what they did to your film scripts in Hollywood.”
Well, thank you very much for reminding me, dear, I find myself mumbling just as she inserts this gem with surgical precision: "How about going back to painting. Maybe watercolour? Let's face it, you're a much better painter than a writer."
Harsh but fair, I thought. But surely not watercolour! That's for boring old fuddy-duddies. I mean, who'd remember Jackson Pollock if he'd been rolling around drunk on bits of paper rather than oversized canvasses covered in bucket loads of sexy/gooey oil paint, plus other unidentified substances, no doubt. And of course no money or fame because you're about as well-known as the Jim's Mowing guy and lucky to earn half as much.
But wait a minute! Isn’t that what you want? Stick it up those boring art snobs who disdainfully liken this time-honoured, complex and unpretentious medium to something slightly above carpentry or carpet cleaning.
Oh, what artful bliss! Thank you, darling, for the insight, and for helping me recognise my true calling in life ... apart from washing the dishes.