COLUMN: ShawCROSS

The Post's resident art critic Harriet Shawcross bemoans the need for modern art ‘blurbs’.

Picture this: a three-metre square candy pink canvas, intersected by six panels of pale pink paint. That’s it – big bland and boring.

You are currently visualising ‘Incubus’, a painting by Gary Hume, which dominates the first floor of the Tate Modern.

Not many people stop for ‘Incubus’: it’s not as fun as the slides, and hasn’t got Picasso’s kudos.
But linger by the accompanying blurb for a few minutes and a curious phenomenon takes place: people flock to join you.

Everyone loves a good blurb. Earnest looking women with backpacks umm and ahh appreciatively, and dopey students stop and stare.

Forget the merit of the art itself - shove a few polysyllables next to a canvas and suddenly it has meaning. Gravitas. Clout.

Take ‘Incubus’ for example: this is not a big pink picture, it is an ‘exploration of the juxtaposition of high art seriousness with the mundanity of hospital doors’. Oh Really.

Even better than that, the ‘high gloss paint creates a reflective surface in which the viewer’s figure appears’, immersing the public in the belly of the ‘Incubus’. How clever.

If only gallery curators could credit the general public with being even half as intelligent as the artists on display.

We don’t need a pocket-sized bit of practical criticism to appreciate modern art. If it’s obscure, then fine, but please don’t patronise us by telling us what it means.

Art is not a verbal medium, and sometimes there’s just not that much to say that could improve on the spectacle itself.

When it comes to ‘Incubus’, it’s pink, and for what its worth, I liked it.

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