by Bazz Bazzley

Created on: May 10, 2008   Last Updated: January 01, 2012

Here's the truth!
The YBA movement had absolutely nothing to do with the YBA. The dimwits and dullards who supposedly comprised the 'group' were as surprised as the public that their idiotic, drug induced doodlings were being taken seriously. However, like kangaroos in a game park, at the mention of money they leaped up and colonised the term enthusiastically. Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Mark Wallinger et al, couldn't believe their luck when cynical ex-adman and millionaire Charles Saatchi descended upon their junken efforts and offered them cash to purchase!

Cash? Purchase?
Little did they know of course that they were and are merely pawns in a much bigger game dating back to when Charles Saatchi - the great brand father - lost his and his brother's agency to WPP. Still ambitious and with nothing to do, Saatchi (Charles) sought a new way to make a buck by teaming up with the hideous horror that is Nick Serota - head of the Tate Modern, a man who knows as much about art as the Pope knows about internet sex sites. Saatchi, from his experiences in advertising, knew the art world was laden with prices, poltroons and artists' names no one had ever heard of.

Serota knew the industrial mausoleum of the Tate Modern, to which he'd been appointed, needed brand names to attract the public...it was a marriage made in Mondrian! And so they went about their dismal work collecting and displaying the artless and craft-less confections of the slightly dim and vaguely demented. Cheap to buy, easy (with Charles's expertise) to sell.

The great brand father was in his element...Hirst! Emin! Wallinger! Forget the ineptitude, lack of talent and absurdity...'the name's the game' and you can't really disagree with his logic... he's already convinced millions he's right and millions to change hands with the help of Serota, who gives the idiocy a respectable housing. They of course snigger all the way to the bank on the strength of two crushed Coca Cola cans or the wipings of an ass on lavatory paper and I suppose you can't blame them.

If we're foolish enough to tolerate this blatant skewing of the market and genuflect over the most crass and idiotic assemblages known since we all climbed out of the primeval stew, then I think these two utter imposters should be applauded for their sheer chutzpa!

So where does that leave the YBA?
Fantastically rich, astonishingly ungifted and contemplating their egg and chips in some scuzz ball cantina.

I don't know... I'll leave it with you but I thought art was about craft - and one without the other is like Laurel without Hardy, Morecombe without Wise, just doodles of triviality and cliche...but of course craft don't come easy, it takes time, dedication and work to master but from which art great follows. Hell what do I know?

Two bogies on a dishcloth anybody?

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