From: John Aiken
To: all-undergraduates @sladeschool.ucl.ac.uk
Subject: Closure of Slade
Dear all,
I am sorry to announce that the Slade School of Fine Art will cease teaching as of next Monday, owing to startling revelations from the ghosts of various core figures of 20th Century art, who have revealed this whole ‘modern art’ malarkey to be a terrible misunderstanding.
Starting with Impressionism, the ghost of Claude Monet explained that he and his fellow Impressionists just had appallingly bad eyesight and were painting the blurs in front of them, genuinely believing the world had been suffused by some kind of depressing mist. Apparently the enormous quantity of ‘waterlily’ paintings were due to the fact that Monet was terrified of venturing into the splodgey mess the world had become and simply sat, with a flask, an easel and some cold chicken sandwiches, squinting myopically at that bloody Japanese bridge until someone remembered him and took him indoors. The shade of Picasso spoke for the Cubists, bravely admitting, “We just weren't very good at painting. Sorry.”
The story of the Surrealists has a variety of embarrassing explanations. Max Ernst appears to simply have been stark raving mad, whereas Giorgio de Chirico was just a little attention deficit, trying to paint conventional landscapes and then giving up half-way through, leaving ‘meaningful’ pictures of a train and some bananas. René Magritte’s ghost holds the most grievances, explaining between hysterical sobs, “It really wasn’t a pipe! It was a chamber pot balanced on a hockey stick! It was one of those trompe Voeils. I thought people might find it funny! Why didn’t you just believe me?” Apparently Dali joined through peer pressure and got a little carried away.
Pop art, Andy Warhol assures us, was just “a bit of a laugh. It was pretty hilarious to see The Man buying what were essentially imcomplete comic books and badly photocopied photos splashed over with highlighter.” Since then, art has been a load of posts and neos, which only goes to show we have no idea what’s going on and have been led right up the garden path.
So students, you can all go and get proper degrees and enter the ranks of middle management, which you were probably going to do anyway but at least now you have no illusions about it. In the meantime, we are going to sit on the ruins of our reputation and wait for the next Renaissance.
All the best,
John A.
Discovered by Ka Bradley