Monet and the Status Quo* 

I do like Water Lilies.  And I don’t like being challenged, hectored and proselytized.

I am so glad that all the major state galleries are doing exhibitions devoted to the nineteenth century.  “Relaxed, and comfortable”, an artistic “Narnia”.   It is like we’re living in a perpetual sepia coloured soft focus world in which everything is “so nice”.

In fact I feel a poem coming on:

We need a lot of Monet

In each and every public gallery, theres more and more of the same
It’s comforting. So reassuring, to know each and every artist by name
There’s Degas, Turner and Manet, whilst you sip your Pimms and Dubonnet
There’s goings on at the Musee de Orsay, though it’ll cost quite a bit of Monet

Through a rose coloured palette we wander, bathed in impressionist light.
“Bad children!’- the shrill voice of those moderns,  banished from all of our sight
Safe, cosseted comfortable.  A dictum  all you need to know.
Saved ugliness, contemporary directors decree ‘Preserve the Status Quo’

‘Contemporary art is too shocking’,  though an occassional glimpse will suffice
The purpose of art must surely to be more than decorative, pleasing and nice.
Why challenge ourselves with an artist who will tell us all where to go
When we wallow in nostalgic pathos, without pangs of needing to know

And click, click click go the turnstiles, as a Blockbuster rolls into town
The Biggest!  The Best!, Most Expensive! Dusted off and made ‘new found’
And what purpose this dull repetition, what stratagem deigns to surmount us?
A victory for the man in the street? No, a victory for the accountants.

*(Not the band, famous for their lyric, “ roll over lay down and let me in”)