Will modern art go on forever?

Yes it does seem like that sometimes doesn’t it! But the good news is that no it won’t, nothing is infinite. Contrary to the ‘proofs’ offered by the French mathematician Georg Cantor, ever thing has at least two ends and a middle in between. We are current somewhere in modern art’s middle, we’ve past its front end and I confidently predict that we can look forward to seeing its rear end very soon. Modern art has already lost its dominance of private galleries is on the ropes in the auction rooms and is a dead man walking in the institutional galleries. These last bastions will fall to the forces of ‘proper art’ once the incumbent generation of institutionalised curators either die off, or are killed off by hoards of angry art lovers demanding they spend public money buying the art the public itself would spend its money on buying if only they had a lot more money to spend.

Now you may say this is all nonsense [and having read through it I would be tempted to agree with them. Ed.], that the Tate Modern (spit) is the most visited museum in the whole of London and possible the world, that it is has over 700 floors all stuffed to the gills with modern art of the very worst kind and that doesn’t seem to be putting people off going. Well all this is may be true [not sure about the 700 floors. Ed.]. But we must remember that: the Bedlam lunatic asylum, just a short walk down the road from the Tate Modern and which for the small fee of six pence, would admit visitors to see the antics of its inmates… is closed. However, were it to reopen for business I suspect it would draw most of the crowd from the Tate Modern (spit), providing of course, that it dropped its prices.

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The Tate Modern (spit) is NOT an art gallery, it is a free freak show. People take the kids on a Sunday afternoon to have their photo taken next to the latest oversized offering in the turbine hall, to gasp in amazement at the swirling smudges of gaudily coloured paint that looks like something their cat could do, to stare in bafflement at the blank canvases and gasp in admiration at the sheer bloody cheek of the installations. All with the misguided illusion that they’ve ‘had a bit of culture’ and warm glow which comes from it only having cost them whatever was they really couldn’t dissuaded the kids from buying in the gift shop plus the price of a stiff gin or two to calm granddad’s blood pressure.

Over the past century proper art has been trivialised as light-weight, ‘mere’ representation, unworthy of the attention of serious (i.e. rich) collectors or important (i.e. selling) artists or clever (i.e. unintelligible.) critics. But with proper artists like Jack Vetriano getting top dollar at auction, opinions are changing. I hasten to add, that the art worlds wheelers and dealers have not had a ‘change of heart’ (they have none) and have not ‘seen of the light’ (they are blind), indeed they would spend all day singing the praises of pile of filthy bed sheets if they thought they could flog it for 150,000 quid… and they have. Their opinion simply follows the money and the money is starting to flow towards proper art. Jack Vettriano may, or may not, be the world’s greatest proper painter but at least the debate can be about subject, colour, brushwork, draftsmanship and composition; and not whether ‘the thematic content of individual works derives solely from the import of the language employed, while presentational means and contextual placement play crucial, yet separate, roles’ or such similar bollocks.

So all in all the future is bright, the future is not orange with a lilac dribble in one corner that looks a bit like a drowned rat if you screw your eyes up. The only infinite aspect of modern art is the infinite amount of bollocks that will continue to be talked about it by critics, curators and artists; that really does have no end.

www.maxschindler.com