The Question?

What is it? I mean the question. Andrew Graham-Dixon on the Culture Show came up with an interesting statistic. Apparently, there are more practicing artists in London than the population of the Florence at the time of Michelangelo. Who knows how many Art Dealers, Agents, Art consultants, Art administrators, Art critics, and so on, and on. Yes, Art has become an industry. When the Britt Art became the establishment even John Major jumped in and welcomed the potential for possible revenue into the cash starved economy of the nineties. The cool Britannia was on the map, the YBA and the Gold Rush. What about the Gold? Is Gold the answer? Perhaps.

I remember walking along in the British Art Fair at BDC in 1997 (I think) and I came across a bunch of kids, it looked like a birthday party of some sort and apparently that is exactly what it was. They were inside some colourful tent drinking cheap wine in a plastic glass and they were deliriously happy. They were saying that Duchamp was wrong, Art is Alive, Art is reborn. The tent belonged to Tracey Emin and in distance I could see the watchful eye of the dealer. And no, it was not the Big Brother.

Fame, the great intoxicator. Perhaps, it is the answer. I see the rat race every day, the rush to create and endless desire. What is this great black whole that absorbs us all? Sorry, what was the question?

The fear!

I remember looking at a photograph, millennium ago. I used to go round the grave yards and take pictures not of the graves but of the people. The grave yards back home are very lively and there are grave attendances that go round and water the graves. There was a particular photograph that frightened me. An old man, with a sun baked face In the midst of dust, I saw a pair of penetrating eyes. The intelligence of the man was unmistakable. And then it was his hands holding the improvised watering can. It was the elegance of those hands that shook me. What was he doing there, this great man? Sorry, what was the question?