Art? For Christ’s sake

My old man is a vet. More James Herriot than unkempt, disillusioned American peacenik who sits around telling people that they wouldn’t understand because they weren’t there, man, he travels the highways and byways of Offaly in his cowshite-encrusted van, ministering to the poorly among the county’s animal population. Naturally, like many a proud young toddler who wanted nothing more than to emulate his father, I spent many of my early years performing complex surgical procedures on teddy bears and dolls with a plastic junior doctor set, forlornly hoping that one day he’d forget to lock the room in which he stored the good stuff: scalpels, needles, drugs and the giant blood-stained saw used for taking the horns off cattle and dismembering bold boys who didn’t eat their vegetables or go to bed when they were told. They were happy days.

“Look daddy, I’m a vet… aren’t I?” I’d shout excitedly whenever he came home from work. He’d tousle my hair, smile proudly and agree: “Yes son, you’re a vet… just like me.” Such ringing endorsements never failed to put a spring in my step, until one day I had an epiphany upon realising that bin men got paid to stand on the back step of moving lorries. Refuse collection, not veterinary surgery, was the job for me.

Spare a thought then, for the young son of modern “Brit Artist” Philippe Bradshaw. A man who until quite recently made his home in a converted ladies toilet, Bradshaw lives apart from his partner and little boy because he sees his life as an artist being incompatible with family living. In the first episode of The New EastEnders, an unintentionally hilarious fly-on-the-wall documentary charting the lives of Hoxton’s new British artists, Bradshaw explained his peculiar domestic arrangement by musing that it would be unfair of him to burden his son with his own artistic angst and obsession. Sometimes, he said, his knee-high child would potter about in the studio and say: “Look daddy, I’m an artist… aren’t I?”. Sadly, Bradshaw always felt unqualified to reassure his son, as he finds himself constantly questioning even his own abilities.

Well you may laugh, but these are the kind of pretentious goons I have to share air-space and public amenities with in London. Tracey Emin, a woman who famously passed off her unmade bed as art and got away with it, was interviewed as she arranged the soundtrack for a one-minute “film” she’d made at the behest of Becks beer. A peculiar looking specimen, her main complaint about being the darling of the Brit Art bunch was that she had no privacy, a fact she illustrated by saying that she doesn’t even let friends have her telephone number as it invariably ends up in the hands of journalists who ring up and ask for her opinions on various matters. Sadly, the irony of the fact that a woman whose stock-in-trade is self-publicity was whining on in such a fashion during a documentary in which she was clearly a willing participant went completely unnoticed by both her and the journalist who was asking her for her opinions on various matters.

Then there was Tim Noble and Sue Webster, partners in life and business who, according to The New EastEnders, seem to be teetering on the brink of artistic celebrity. In common with Tracey Emin, they too seem to have only a very passing acquaintance with the concept of irony:

“I’ve always been a complete loner and so has Tim. That’s probably why we’re attracted to each other,” explained Sue, seemingly oblivious to the fact that hermits don’t generally hang around in pairs. Nevertheless, these seemingly inseparable loners were perhaps the most talented of all the artists involved in The New EastEnders, as their exhibition featured a solitary exhibit made from stuffed animals that was so big it looked for a while that it might not fit through the gallery door.

For this reporter, the proportions of an

“installation” compared to those of the entrance to the room in which it is being

exhibited have always proved as effective a

way as any of judging the merits of a work of modern art. It’s a simple premise: the more something looks like it couldn’t possibly have fitted through the door, the more impressive I invariably think it is. You can imagine how

excited I got when it became apparent that

their taxidermist’s wet dream might have to be winched in through a window. The news that even this approach would prove a very tight squeeze almost prompted me to pick up the phone and ring in with a bid. Almost, but not quite.

Sadly, one lady who was having a rough trot of it in Shoreditch (a complete dump which is apparently “the epicentre of the biggest ever boom in the history of British art”) was Lorna White, a young artist who was trawling the locale in search of a studio to rent. As an estate agent who has made millions leasing studios in the epicenter of the epicenter of the biggest ever boom in the history of British art showed her around a poky garret which could be hers for 20 grand a year, a hissing sound became faintly audible as she visibly deflated before the cameras. A self-confessed small fish in a big pond, Laura did however speak of how a Brit artist’s lot wasn’t always such an unhappy one. Tearing into a sheet of polystyrene with a scalpel, she spoke of the joys of losing herself in her work. “You could just keep going and going and going with it and there comes a point when you think: ‘Oh, I’ve got to go home… I’ve got to eat. I haven’t eaten for six hours’.”

Six whole hours without food? Bless. Who’d be a starving artist? London’s great.

My London.