"our miserable king can't protect us from ourselves"

edinburgh was as fair and bountiful a city as you could ever ask for. weirdest thing about it is how its got everything in walking space. but i mean, literally everything. like as you step out of the scottish parliament, which is the centre of edinburgh, if you cross the street youre on the side of a mountain, with countryside stretching for miles ahead of you. it's crazy, i never knew.

anyway it was a weekend of museums for me. the last one i visited was the national gallery of scotland for a joan eardley exhibition. the work was in general good, especially the seascapes, and i left feeling refreshed and upbeat. as i was leaving, my eyes were caught by another exhibition, this time of contempory art.

sigh.

right, i love art me. but, as with music, i'm not one of those people who is afraid to say 'this is shit' for fear of being a phillistine who doesn't get it. one of the pieces in the contempory exhibition was three planks of wood propped up against the wall. in the lengthy text it said that they were in their 'rested state'. i mean for fucks sake.

stuff like this is pretention of the highest order. it is awful, it is boring, it is a crap, empty idea given a facade of genius to make people pretend they like it. it is the lowest of the low. if it was entered into a gcse art exam, it would barely scrape a pass. loads of people will say 'thats not the point!' but it actually is. this is shit art. the approach to art like this is 'lets be simplistic' and as such, i'm going to view it simplistically as well and say 'this is shit art'.

the best thing was, someone tried to take a photo of it and the security guy said 'no photos'. brilliant. i think the idea of photographing it is a much better post-modern statement than the actual piece itself. how can you ever beat taking a picture of some wood because it's "art" as a statement against the complexity of art? genius!

anyway the only thing that broke through this shit was stuff by jessica harrison, who mentally i've just found out went to frodsham and john deanes. she basically warps classical art standards with mild surrealism and i liked it a lot. here's something by her which wasnt the best but is the only example of her drawing i cant find on the net:



caught a very small amount of 'i'm a celebrity' on saturday night before i switched over and one of them said 'this is probably one of the most stressful and emotionally strenuous jobs i've ever had.' not sure whether calling it a 'job' was a momentary slip-up or just profound honesty.