Tedium and Uncertainty

Art takes strange forms these days said Pliny the Elder. By your account the exhibition was a series of cynical exercises in tedium and uncertainty. I prefer art to be more straightforward. A fine statue. A painting of a bunch of grapes so well executed that the birds fly down to peck at them.

That is old fashioned, I said. People still do produce art like that. There is nothing wrong with it. But imagine an amazing lifelike picture of some grapes on a vine. Imagine that over the course of a few weeks the grapes grow and ripen and eventually go rotten and shrivel up. Would not that be fascinating? That is a framed art film; you could hang it on your wall.

Or I could look out of the window, said Pliny drily. Perhaps you could have chosen a better example.