King Chicken

There was a woman on the radio today who has just written a book entitled “Why Your Five Year Old Could Not Have Done That”. She is an advocate of the gallery system as an effective means of bringing worthwhile pieces of art to the attention of the public.

She made the point that it is people in the know, the artistic community, people who have studied art, curators etc. who decide what makes it into galleries in the first place. So a filter has already been applied before what we would call “the public” get to see it. Which of course begs the eternal question; what is art and more pertinently who decides?

The same scenario applies when it comes to fashion. You’ve often heard it said of someone that they have style or taste or a great sense of fashion based on the clothes that they wear. Clothes that were inevitably purchased in a shop. Clothes that were chosen for that shop by a buyer in an office in London or New York or Paris. At least one filter has already been applied. It's the same story with furniture.

We think we like certain art, clothes or furniture but the decision has been made for us behind closed doors. 

I wrote a poem yesterday on the back of my bus ticket about a chicken that survives the nuclear holocaust. By my reckoning that’s art. But you will never see it so by our friend's logic it is not art any more, it ceases to be art when it doesn't attract an audience.

According to her any One Direction song you care to choose has more artistic merit than post apocalyptic poultry poetry.

That can't be right.