"My father called it art. I call it child abuse."
Yesterday I saw an article about an avant garde Scandinavian artist who has "created" what I suppose they call an installation consisting of all the furniture of her apartment.
How much talent did that take? How much thought? Have a guess. Two minutes? Three?
Nowadays you just have an idea, the more ludicrous the better - and that's art.
Or you think up something disgusting - do it, and that's art. Gilbert and George are good at that - leaders of what you might call the shit-stirrers movement.
Robert Mapplethorpe decided that photographing someone sticking their fist up someone's arse is art and was acclaimed as a genius.
Maybe so, maybe not - but at least his technique was excellent.
Very little art now seems to have any relationship to - or respect - for technique.
All this brings me to my heading, from an interview with a lady whose father revelled in filming her in the nude when she was 11 - asking questions like "have men started noticing your breasts?" - claiming this was art.
New York University now has a 45 minute film of her which they are refusing to give her - no doubt for reasons of "artistic integrity." Maybe all child molesters are misunderstood geniuses engaged in their own special type of performance art.
If like me you think they - and other abusers - should be sought out and prevented from exercising their artistic tendencies join the Stop Abuse campaign, started by a friend - with a logo by another friend.