You don't have to bid at Sotheby's to acquire art . . . try your local DIY store, writes Michael Parsons.
THE INTERNATIONAL art market appears to be gripped by a speculative frenzy not dissimilar to the "irrational exuberance" which periodically infects stock markets or the virus which caused, otherwise conservative, Irish people to buy property "off-plan" on mountainsides in Bulgaria or along remote stretches of the Turkish coast. The phenomenon is not unlike the tulip mania which afflicted Holland during the early 17th century.
Recent sales of impressionist, modern and contemporary art held at Sotheby's and Christie's in London of works by Picasso, Monet, Magritte and Warhol saw prices in the dizzying millions. And a painting by Dublin-born artist, the late Francis Bacon, entitled Triptych 1974-77fetched €35 million.
Bacon is - by far - the most expensive "Irish" artist. Demand for his work is now so great there is even a lucrative market for his rubbish - literally the mutilated canvases which he threw out for the dustman.
But the most spectacular art sale in recent times occurred at Sotheby's in New York in November 2006, when a Mexican financier reportedly paid the equivalent of €110 million - the highest price ever achieved for a painting - for Number 5, 1948by American artist Jackson Pollock.
The so-called "drip painting" was created by the artist pouring oils on to a canvas. He had experimentally dispensed with brushes. They're not much use if you can't paint.
His innovative style - which had art luvvies swooning - results in the sort of picture that prompts people to say, "Sure, my two-year old could do better than that". Well, as it happens, the British media have reported that a painting by fashionable artist Damien Hirst was, in fact, "thrown together" by the artist's two-year-old son and a 10-year-old playmate.
No one seems particularly dismayed by the revelation. After all, Hirst, who is famous for pickling sheep and sharks in formaldehyde, and recently for decorating a human skull with diamonds, has also cheerfully and unashamedly admitted to using production-line methods and employing a large staff to produce his "works of art".
The skull is apparently for sale with a price tag of £50 million. Instead of being horsewhipped through Piccadilly, Hirst is feted as a genius and regarded as a "celebrity" - the new term for a charlatan.
Much contemporary art defies mockery. Everyone has a loopy favourite. Mark Wallinger, who won the 2007 Turner Prize, is best known for a 2½-hour video called Sleeper.
It depicts the artist dressed as a bear wandering around an empty art gallery in Berlin and is guaranteed to send you to the Land of Nod quicker than whiskey-laced Ovaltine.
British artist Mary Kelly's Primpara, Bathingseries, shown at the prestigious Documenta modern art show in Germany last summer, consists of a series of black-and-white photographs showing the artist cutting her toenails.
But this biscuit takes some beating. The Chapter arts centre in Cardiff paid Turner Prize shortlisted Japanese artist Tomoko Takahashi a grant of £5,000 to stage her "performance art" show, which involved drinking 48 bottles of lager before attempting to walk across a balancing beam. Nice work (and thirsty too) if you can get it. But if you didn't get to Cardiff to see the work, you can check out startlingly similar "artists" performing on streets from Thurles to Temple Bar for "free" - any Friday night.
However, there's no need to travel abroad to be bored or disgusted, bemused or depressed by contemporary art. Galleries all over Ireland have ample quantities of ugly, self-indulgent and, quite simply, atrocious art.
The current fad is for "installation art", which is what art students produce when they discover - as most do - their inability to draw or to execute even a passable still-life apple.
Hirst - and his growing band of fellow-traveller con-artists - are gleefully milking a gullible, greedy and, apparently, insatiable public demand for art "investments".
Their success is a devastating indictment of an art market cartel propped up by a cabal of gallery owners, auction houses, curators, critics and academics who encourage the truly dismal work being pumped out by graduates of art schools everywhere. However, there are welcome signs that the public is wising up. If you're looking for a nice painting to brighten up your walls, you might consider trying Woodie's.
The DIY and garden store with branches nationwide is selling canvases to brighten up your home. Mass-produced, vaguely abstract, modern art is, in fact, now widely available at most hardware shops and department stores.
Art purists may shudder, but the pictures are not bad, are eminently affordable, fit neatly into your trolley along with tile adhesive and chrome towel rails and, even better, you won't have to deal with a snooty, merino-turtlenecked gallery assistant with a stroppy "attitude", protruding cheekbones and glacial smile.
Art "by the square foot" is the market's brilliant "emperor has no clothes" riposte to the po-faced art establishment which accords uncritical acclaim to dross.
If tat such as Tracy Emin's unmade bed, video "installations" by artists who really should be sectioned, or "limited-edition prints" by Louis le Brocquy qualify as "art" then, logically, why not that nice, colourful Chinese-factory-made picture (which goes great with the curtains) for just €40 from Dunnes?
Why, such an acquisition could even be described as wittily provocative and demonstrative of a thoroughly postmodern, deconstructionist approach. The Surrealists would surely have approved.
Michael Parsons is a freelance journalist and regular contributor toThe Irish Times .