All modern art is crap, discuss

Now I like to be a bit controversial, and to stir up a discussion but what did I get in the comments section below yesterday? A sermon!  I seem to have whipped up a bit of a storm with my suggestion yesterday about all modern art being crap, rap music being art , and my attitude to wealth.

Some, the more perceptive amongst you were in agreement about modern art. Who can forget the “bag of coal” exhibit for, I think, The Turner Prize a decade or more ago? For those too young to remember, one “artist” created a small pile of coal at enormous expense. It was fawned over by the modern art establishment and received widespread TV and media coverage. I laughed out loud when I saw it.  Crap of the highest order, but I do have a sneaking admiration for these charlatans who have found bizarre ways to loosen the purse strings of the rich and the gullible. Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Henry Moore and dozens of others have made a great deal of money by persuading rich idiots that their “art” has value. The top of that pile must be Charles Saatchi. He and the Tate Modern are the most monumental examples of this gullibility.

There were some rumblings of discontent about my positive attitude to a much higher art form, rap music, capturing the spirit of real people and bursting out onto the mainstream of culture in the 1980’s, despite a moribund record industry’s determination for it to fail as a popular art form. There is more merit in every hip hop record released on my label, Music Of Life, than all the three phonies above in their whole output combined. Of course it is just my opinion, everything is subjective, but then again I know I am right.

I was also tacitly accused of being unhappy and motivated only by money. I think I am one of the happiest people alive. Who could not be moved by the sheer joy customers get from having a foreign exchange account with Currencies Direct ?  Apart from being ripped from the bosom of Valbonne by annoyingly short-sighted semi-communist French politicians, I have a lovely life. If one has to spend extended time in England then there is no better place than Arundel to do it. Motivated by money is a vice to which I admit. A poor (but unfashionably very happy) childhood motivated me to make money to buy things I wanted and enjoy it and life on the way.  Money is only a means to an end, if I knew which day I was going to die I would spend the last penny the day before. A career structure starting as a dustman, a cricket coach, music promoter, music manager and then record company co-founder would have left me with a CV looking like a wasteland, but luckily I never wanted a proper job but it turned out very well in the end.

So back to events of yesterday. The Arundel Luncheon Club had a very satisfying meal at the George and Dragon at Houghton. My duck breast on a bed of Singapore noodles in a hoisin sauce was remarkably good, and not just because I had been starving myself for 2 days.  The scallops, bacon and black pudding enjoyed by our party was also sensational.

The Arun at Arundel, but on a good day

It is a quintessentially beautiful English pub with a wonderful open fire and a great chef.  The perfect antidote for another dastardly day of grey cold drizzle, accompanied yesterday by a stuff a north-easterly breeze, keeping the temperatures down to 2 or 3 degrees Celsius when we went out walking in the morning along the River Arun. As we turned back having struggled less than 2 mikes along the river bank, I said to that Nice Lady Decorator  that it was lucky we had seen some sun in the Alps last week, otherwise I would have been calling the travel agent.

Chris France