Anthony Daniels visits a degree show at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
I am in blood
Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er.
Macbeth, Act 3 scene iv
No one would have understood better than Macbeth the logic of the inexorable destruction by the art education establishment of artistic tradition, and thereby the value of practically all subsequent artistic production. The process must continue, or those who were and are responsible for it must admit their guilt and lose their jobs. Their livelihoods, if not their lives, are at stake. Therefore that establishment must continue to see worth in worthlessness and deep significance in the utterly trivial, and to persuade the public that if it does not do likewise the fault lies with its own lack of sophistication and powers of discrimination. The art education establishment draws aid and comfort from the following quasi-syllogism taken from art history, the kind of vulgate that is now, alas, familiar to every art student:
Van Gogh was not understood in his lifetime and sold not a single painting to the public. Van Gogh was a great painter. His story was typical of art history down the ages. Artists X, Y, and Z