I’ve had enough of the art Mafia’s elitist ideas

Ionce heard an art student being told by her tutor to”consider the concept of doorness”. Hmph, I thought. The student went through a rigmarole of describing a door as a hinged flap in a wall or cupboard which allows entry and exit to the space beyond.

So far, so good, I thought. “But now,” the tutor went on, “consider what happens if the door you describe is removed from its hinges and fixed to, shall we say, the ceiling.” It gets better. “It’s a door fixed to the ceiling,” said the student. Right, I thought. “No,” said the tutor, “the concept of its ‘doorness’ has ceased to be.”

It was at that point that I gave up on the concept of doorness and of anything that might be considered conceptual art.

The reason I’m telling you this is that trees, art and paving are planned for Cllr Gerry Clarkson’s rather optimistic dream of a thriving Commercial Quarter.

The sad fact is that Ashford has had some costly but dismal encounters with public conceptual art. Take the fortune spent on that silly ‘flume’ idea; it possibly passes muster as a pavement decoration (where is hasn’t been broken and filled in with tarmac). Then consider the rusty-looking ‘bolt’ (it’s made of a metal that looks rusty but isn’t). Nobody has the

‘None of it, in my humble opinion, has been in any way life-enhancing’

faintest idea of what it’s about, apart from the chap who made it and, possibly, the chap who was duped into spending our money on it

Remember when, a few years ago, fortunes were paid to an artist to paint yellow bird shapes on the ring road and to another for cobbling together a bouquet of road signs which nearly caused confused motorists to have mental breakdowns?

And the dead building on the corner opposite the station approach was wrapped in brown paper? None of it, in my humble opinion, has been in any way life-enhancing. Except, that is, to members of the art Mafia with their elitist ideas of what the proles need rather than what they want.

The present crop of designs being put forward by the worthy John Lester (shown in last week’s KE) are at least of recognizable things – horses, choo-choo trains and Spitfires (do we really need more war stuff ?)

But why on earth the holes in them are declared to suggest they are ‘emerging from the past’ is plain dippy.