I was reading an excellent article yesterday by Bryan Appleyard in the magazine Intelligent Life. There, he reports on Andy Warhol and the unsurpassed, astronomically high prices his works can achieve. The article was refreshingly honest, challenging the wider perception of Warhol as a genius of Art, questioning the integrity of the market for his work, and concluding, finally, that the world of conceptual art, which was prompted so sensationally by Warhol with his soulless soup cans and unchallenging, repetitive silk-screen printed celebrity faces, is now over. Conceptual art, that is art driven by ideas rather than sensuous, emotional engagement has, he says, had its time, its 20 year reign over the art world expired.
The article is like a fresh air in an art world which seems to me to be so inherently pretentious at the same time as being so stagnant in the putrefaction of its own closed-door confines that there is no room left for a rational spokesman standing up for the middle man, asking, challenging: is that art? Isn’t that an utter piece of rubbish? Too often we are presented with a heap of detritus/ moulding bed sheets, used condoms etc, and because it is in a gallery, we are suppose to treat it as art. It’s extremely cringeworthy when I see clearly educated people attending a gallery, speaking pretentiously between one another about the fall of the light, the emotional landscape and the artistic intention adhering to a black sack in the corner of a gallery. For all they know, it might have been abandoned there in error by the cleaners.
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Richard III (2016 ©Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, acrylic on canvas)
Tube Norms (2012, © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen on paper)
Norms at the Halloween House of Horrors (2012 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen on paper)
Norms in Dubrovnik take the Cable Car (2014 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen and ink on paper)
Norms visit the C’an Joan de S’Aigo (2014 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen and ink on paper)
While these Norm tourists are at the Musée Rodin.
Norms in Soller (2013, © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown)
For Lisbon Norms this is a scene from every day life
Norms in Pisa (2012 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen and ink on paper)
The Nighthawk Norms (after Hopper) (2012 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen on paper)
Norms on Dubrovnik Beach (2014 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen and ink on paper)
Norms at La Pedrera (2014 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen and ink on paper)
While for Parisian Norms, it’s not unusual to see Egyptians wondering by.
The Daily Norm 
Dec 5
Here’s hoping: Horray for the death of Conceptual Art
I was reading an excellent article yesterday by Bryan Appleyard in the magazine Intelligent Life. There, he reports on Andy Warhol and the unsurpassed, astronomically high prices his works can achieve. The article was refreshingly honest, challenging the wider perception of Warhol as a genius of Art, questioning the integrity of the market for his work, and concluding, finally, that the world of conceptual art, which was prompted so sensationally by Warhol with his soulless soup cans and unchallenging, repetitive silk-screen printed celebrity faces, is now over. Conceptual art, that is art driven by ideas rather than sensuous, emotional engagement has, he says, had its time, its 20 year reign over the art world expired.
The article is like a fresh air in an art world which seems to me to be so inherently pretentious at the same time as being so stagnant in the putrefaction of its own closed-door confines that there is no room left for a rational spokesman standing up for the middle man, asking, challenging: is that art? Isn’t that an utter piece of rubbish? Too often we are presented with a heap of detritus/ moulding bed sheets, used condoms etc, and because it is in a gallery, we are suppose to treat it as art. It’s extremely cringeworthy when I see clearly educated people attending a gallery, speaking pretentiously between one another about the fall of the light, the emotional landscape and the artistic intention adhering to a black sack in the corner of a gallery. For all they know, it might have been abandoned there in error by the cleaners.
Read more