The following article was forwarded to me by an artist whose work I greatly respect and admire. The article itself annoys me - but then it is the Daily Mail so I'm not terribly surprised.
Critic David Hickey Quits as Art World Becomes "Too Obsessed with Money and Celebrity"
The Solution:
Don't quit. Stop following the in-crowd.
Go and look for the art that is meaningful to you.
Come and find some of the artists to whom art is more than meaningful - it is a way of experiencing the world and of trying to relate to and engage with that world through their own sensory experience.
Art can be transformative, powerful, and empowering ...
And there are artists of all sorts, all ages, all creeds and colours and media who create something meaningful out of nothing without ever a celebrity on hand. Many of us building on the artists who have come before, yet always seeking to create something new. We are are artists whose work is inspired by yesterday and aspires towards tomorrow, pausing only briefly on the here and the now - just long enough for every brush stroke, pencil line and knife edge to record our passing, turning our thoughts, our dreams, our breath, our emotions into something tangible. Something that may even be beautiful, but that will take more satisfaction from it's power to make you stop and think about the world around you in a different way. Perhaps we might even reflect an unknown part of yourself back at you so that you look again at your own life experience and see something unexpectedly amazing ...
And the vast majority of us are artists who don't have the media on our side and might well appreciate a champion, rather than another critic saying art is meaningless. Art is not meaningless - it just doesn't mean all things to all people.
So, Mr Hickey, go and find the art that means something to you and then sing it to the four winds.
Who knows. You might actually make a difference.