British Prime Minister David Cameron recently invited Tracey Emin, a purveyor of work which is shit even by the standards of contemporary art, to produce something – they probably call it “an installation” – for Number 10, Downing Street.

Emin, who won the Turner Prize for exhibiting her own used-condom-strewn bed some years ago, is a fan of Cameron. Yes, can you believe it, an artist supporting the fellow who abolished the Arts Council. She has been quoted as saying that his government is “the best government at the moment we’ve ever had.” Which shows that she’s as much of a political analyst as she is an artist.

Now, I don’t know why they’d need any new “art” in Number 10. Surely the place is chock full of Nineteenth Century paintings of horses. And at a time when the government is cutting back every ministry’s budget by at least 25 percent?

So what did Emin do for Cameron? A neon sign emblazoned with the words: “More Passion.”

Yes, indeed. The artist whose works evoke only negative passions (in me, for
one) urges the starchy Old Etonian and his coterie of distant, heartless
nobs to show more passion. No doubt she intends for them to throw caution to the winds when wielding the red pencil over university budgets and healthcare costs for old people. Show some passion; cut another million quid.

Here’s the true irony of Emin’s neon nonsense: politicians always claim to
be operating on the basis of passion and so do contemporary artists. Yet
both are clearly more interested in cash and have a corrupt ability to manipulate others into swallowing their feigned feelings.

I’ve always thought of art as going directly to your heart or your stomach.
Which is why “contemporary art” leaves me so cold. Art which requires
explanation before impact isn’t art. It may be “design,” but most likely
it’s faddish and aimed to shock. Take passionate Tracey Emin’s famous tent
installation onto which she attached the names of all the people she’d slept
with. Makes you think, eh? Well, no, actually it doesn’t. Unless it makes
you think that it’s a waste of time and that you’re lucky your name isn’t
there.

Read the rest of this post on my blog The Man of Twists and Turns.