Five common ways Londoners engage with 'Fine Art'

Most people's definition of 'Fine Art':  "Paintings and stuff like rotting sheep's heads in a glass case made by those who didn't do well at school and were a bit weird".

'Box of Heads' by Gordon Glyn-Jones

1 Chided by the media, they visit a large gallery out of some sense of cultural duty. Because of the scale of the exhibitions and institutional endorsement, they accept this is as 'good art' and either mentally rebel or embrace it with timid bewilderment.

2 They see an original piece on the walls of a friend or colleague and feel a sense of envy for anyone with the intellectual or economic capacity to be indulging in such things, (but "probably would have chosen a landscape, had it been them").

3 They read an article in the Metro about some artist who has shat in their own hands enough for fifteen seconds of fame. (Warhol was an optimist) e.g. story in Metro of a man who makes art by spraying paint on canvass through his eyeballs... you know the sort of thing. 

4 Brian Sewell will host some terrifying late-night TV spectacle, intravenously feeding us our own hopeless ignorance. Most of us will only have turned it on because we're drunk and can't quite face losing the high just yet. The 'Art' goes some way to helping with that.

5 We'll stumble across exciting images on websites such as: Deviantart or Boredpanda and feel mildly relieved that there are still artists out there making work that fire our imaginations. (It reminds us that we love images but does make us wonder why there aren’t more of them in galleries?).

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