Artless

Unfortunately, the sort of hapless cultural half-wits who enshrined Dadaism as "art" nearly a century ago are still with us:

In an empty room in Boston's South End, track lights go on and off at five-second intervals. The lights illuminate nothing except the bare walls and floor. This is "Work 227: The Lights Going On and Off," the brainstorm of a Scotsman named Martin Creed

Jeff Jacoby takes Mr. Creed (how I so want to change that trailing "d" to a "p") to task in the Boston Globe, and does a passable job of it. But to really get an accurate reading of how I -- and most people who actually possess some artistic talent -- feel about such charlatans, you must read the commentary of the incomparable Mr. John Derbyshire:

What do I think about all this? Well, first I think that the directors of the Tate Gallery, which receives funding from general taxation, should be locked up in prison and made to do hard labor scraping the rust off bolts for twenty years or so with nothing to eat but cold oatmeal porridge. Then I think Mr Creed should be stripped naked, sprayed all over with bright blue paint, and made to run round and round Piccadilly Circus until he drops from exhaustion, after which he should be killed by some not-very-humane method. Then the Tate Gallery should be reduced to rubble by aerial bombardment, the rubble carted away to be used as landfill, and the ground sown with salt. Then the fools who pay good money to look at this "art" should be packed into boxcars and tipped off the white cliffs of Dover, and their mangled corpses left to be feasted on by dogs, crows and crabs.

That will be satisfactory, John.