Peter Hitchens had an on the money item in his column yesterday, on the fake profundity of Fiona Banner's display at the 'Tat Gallery':
I don’t suppose Sir Sidney Camm, Sir Stanley Hooker or Ralph Hooper
ever regarded themselves as artists. But this trio, who designed the
wonderful plane which became famous as the Harrier (and in which I once
flew for a glorious, if queasy, 45 minutes), created a thing of great
beauty.Aeroplanes have to be beautiful or they wouldn’t
fly, but I’ll leave it to you to work out why that might be. I would be
interested to know how the self-styled ‘artist’ Fiona Banner can claim
any real credit for the retired Sea Harrier hung by its tail from the
ceiling of what I think in future must be called the Tat Gallery in
London. Did she hoist it up there herself? Could she, sat alone in a
room with a pencil and a sheet of paper, make a decent drawing of a
Boeing 747 from memory? Yet this woman, hitherto famous for displaying
a long-written description of a pornographic film on a wall, and
calling that ‘art’, now receives sighs of praise from our cultural
elite.With fake profundity, Ms Banner asks how an object
designed as a ‘killing machine’ can evoke such enthusiasm. Well, apart
from the fact that it was designed above all to fly, it rather depends
on whom it was meant to kill, and under what conditions. Maybe
defending peaceful islanders against an illegal invasion doesn’t make
Ms Banner enthusiastic, but I think it’s a pretty good use of human
skill.