SYDNEY.- Contemporary art has lost its ability to move or stimulate us, writes John McDonald. Ivan Massow, the chairman of London's Institute of Contemporary Art, described much of the work shown in the gallery as "pretentious, self-indulgent, craftless tat that I wouldn't even accept as a gift". He went on to accuse the art establishment of "disappearing up its own arse", and launched a broadside against Nicholas Serota, the all-powerful director of the Tate Gallery, whom he characterized as a "cultural tsar". Along with a talent for observation, Massow showed a gift for prophecy when he predicted his own immediate removal from the ICA's chairmanship.

Within a week the board had closed ranks, and he was obliged to resign.Predictably, Massow's comments elicited a huge public response, with most of the letters and emails congratulating him on his courage. To the "art establishment" this merely confirmed the philistine attitudes of the general public, and proved that their favorite artists were striking blows against cultural complacency. Yet this is precisely the conundrum that bedevils all contemporary art: a work may look like rubbish, but so long as it is exhibited in a gallery and implicitly validated by those elite guardians of taste, the curators and critics, it takes on an untouchable aesthetic value. If a member of the public persists in saying the work is rubbish, in defiance of the art experts, he or she will be dismissed as a poor benighted fool who does not understand the complexities and ironies of the field. In this way, an unbridgeable gap is maintained between the public and the art establishment. 


The result is a milieu in which the vast majority of practicing artists, dealers and collectors, feels disenfranchised from the contemporary art institutions. They do not admire most of the "cutting-edge" art that is shown in these museums and in the big art festivals such as the biennales. They do not feel challenged or engaged by this kind of work - for the most part, they find it trivial and opportunistic.