The Emperor’s New Line Item (A Let’s Create™ Extravaganza)
In a gallery scrubbed to a surgical white,
Where the heating is high and the meaning is light,
The Gatekeepers gather in horn-rimmed precision
To fund a “subversive, multi-media vision.”
The artist—who hasn’t held brushes in years—
Is “interrogating” some cardboard and gears.
“It’s liminal!” whispers a voice from the Board,
(Whose organic sourdough he can’t quite afford).
“It challenges praxis! It decentres the norm!”
(It’s actually a bucket of lukewarm reform).
But the Arts Council England ‘Let’s Create’ badge starts to glow:
If it doesn’t look rubbish, the answer is “No.”
For craftsmanship now is “elitist” and “dry,”
Unless it’s a film of a slow-rotting pie.
They’ll fund an ethnic pole-dance troupe to “decolonise” the gym,
Or a transgender artist seeking sperm on a whim.
While the painter sells kidneys to pay for his shed,
They’re funding a mime about gluten-free bread.
They’ve traded the struggle of class for a “Lens,”
To keep all the funding for them and their friends.
A “diverse” revolution that’s perfectly safe,
While the working-man’s talent is treated as waif.
They’ll lecture on “privilege” from Georgian-era halls,
While real human poverty rots at the walls.
The Emperor struts in his conceptual g-string,
While the sycophants praise “the raw truth of the thing.”
“You don’t see the trousers? You’re just under-read!
It’s a socio-political statement,” they said.
“It’s a bold deconstruction of textile and thread!”
(He’s stark bollock naked, and mostly brain-dead).
So toast the “Impact!” and the reputational risk,
As the tax-paying public is bled through the whisk.
For in the new Kingdom of state-sponsored art,
You can’t see the horse… but you’ve paid for the cart.
It’s a pile of old chard in a £10k frame,
And if you don’t ‘get it,’ then you are to blame.
But the worker is watching, the subaltern wakes,
He’s sick of the jargon and “liminal” fakes.
He sees that the 'gate’ isn’t locked from the street,
It’s held by a coward in handmade brogues, discreet.
He’ll stop paying tribute to ghosts in the hall,
And spray “Class is the Issue” right over the wall.
The Emperor’s naked? Fine—leave him to freeze,
While we burn down the gallery and take back the keys.
N.B.
The Hodge Report calls it a “straitjacket,” but I call it a taxpayer-funded wardrobe for an Emperor who’s clearly missing his trousers. Time to stop “interrogating space” and start interrogating the bank statements.
