And some are prepared to try. Bidisha, an ('if you drop your preconceptions and look long enough') art critic and hard working Tracey Emin admirer, rattled off blind platitudes with the ease of one who had swallowed Tracey's PR catechism whole. Bidisha was reviewing the show on BBC 2 alongside sculptor Andy Stoddard, who looked mystified by what he'd been asked to look at and clearly couldn't drop his preconceptions of excellence. He eventually asked Bidisha 'how can you weave this web of words' around what he saw as 'art' not worthy of the year's 'worst student'.

When I visited Tracey Emin's Retrospective show in Edinburgh it inspired two lazy thoughts, which I'll sharpen for my own benefit as much as anyone else's (so there will be organic growth and rewrites).
The first was about the film Trading Places, in which two multi-millionaire manipulators, Randolph and Mortimer, make a bet that one of them can (or can't) take a nobody from the streets, and turn him into a wealthy and ruthless trader on the stock market. Part of the wager also involves plotting the downfall of an established and wealthy city trader, who sinks into the gutter as the beggar-cum hustler Billy Ray, played by Eddie Murphy, rises out of it to fill his expensive shoes.

Judging from Emin's 'work' and the current vogue for such 'art' (for want of more suitable words), this story may be ripe for re-working. An idea for an updated version would be to introduce a couple of successful and wealthy advertising men, Randolph and Mortimer mark 2, who have made use of their knowledge of marketing and spin to reinvent themselves as patrons of the arts, and successful vendors of modern works by modern 'masters' (for want of a better word). However, out of the boredom that endlessly craves novelty, often evident in the extremely wealthy (and the cornerstone of modern art), they decide upon a similar venture to the two manipulators in the original movie.
'You know, I believe that if we chose to, we could elevate anyone to the top of the art world,' suggests the more assertive of the brothers.
'You mean like a coup, in which we place our own Pretender on the throne of genius?,' questioned the other brother, 'but surely, that's what we already have?'.
'Used to have, brother dearest. Anyhow, this time we could go a little further. This time we should choose someone with no talent whatsoever.'
'None? Not even a talent for the game of numbers and celebrity circles?'
'That's surely something they would do well to learn. But certainly someone with no talent or skill for artistic expression.'
The younger brother was not to be convinced. The infamous wager is born.

A suitable candidate is chosen, on which these soiled graces are then bestowed. In the film we see how the wheels of the media industry can be made to move in any direction, as it abstracts and bends in favour of the commercial cause. Celebrity friends, many of whom owe their own celebrity to the same PR machine, are called upon for the openings of this and that.
Past favours are reciprocated at agencies and innumerable media outlets.
Interviews and exclusives are promised to others.
Eulogies are duly written and recorded to camera, and the ad-line is bought and sold with fools gold.
Wot woz pain and insecurity is re-spun as strength and vulnerability.
The 'artist' is complete. The bet is lost but ultimately won, for in the obliteration of (what was left of) the principles of excellence the market is easier to rig and profits will out.

The second avenue of thought was less fanciful though no less depressing, because—irrespective of the fact it could make great screen viewing—the Tracey Syndrome is not about taking the talentless to the highest point in the art world; rather it's a symptom of there being no high point at all.

Modern Art is a pretty flexible term that has more movements to its credit than All-Bran, though some of its more revolutionary advocates might have been better remembered if they'd sought to undermine elitism by representing everyone else's chance to unearth their gift and rise to artistic potential. But unwashed egotism seeks only its own ends and has been admitted to art on the cheap, because the loosely defined principles on which art was founded—talent, acquired skill, vision and genius—have gradually been subverted by those who were denied them by nature. As the mediocre many massively outnumber the genius few, the rules must always be writ downward to facilitate both money and mediocrity's membership of an otherwise forbidding club. Consequently, art has been dragged down through various systems, oeuvres and isms, where the talentless always take rule and refuge, into the creative gutter.

For those who are still able to see beyond the driven perspective, mediocrity's subversion of excellence goes much deeper than daub, dabble, defecate and desecrate.
When was the last time you saw a fiery, passionate script on television that made you want to take up thy telly chair and walk?
When did you last read a newspaper essay or a review which leapt off the page and had you by the metaphorical throat?
When did you last witness a new piece of playwriting that obliterated 'all the right boxes' and cut as deep into the human condition as Shakespeare still does, and was born of the same timeless spark of genius?
When did you ever read a novel that had been written for other motives than paying the mortgage?
And when did you last encounter a piece of art in any discipline, the inspiration for which rose higher than the fame-lust of the so-called artist and gave immeasurably more than it got?
The chances are you haven't and you won't: Mediocrity Amalgamated forbids it.
Taken on their own, none of Emin's 'skills' (for want of a better word) on view at her 20 Year Retrospective could be called a strength and she fails miserably in many forms of expression, either attempting to piece together a whole from many weak strands or to muddy the waters more fully in case she is fully found out. But bad painting doesn't prop up bad drawing, and competent sewing won't bolster puerile sloganeering, and random sentences do no justice to heartfelt hurt.
Deep personal pain is often the germ from which great art is painstakingly born, but in Emin these raw materials have been repeatedly exposed but barely worked, and Emin's incoherence is only made noisier by her attempts to Babel in many tongues. And the halls and walls of an exhibition are no place to find or sell redemption, much less to display the remains of a life never lived, unless you're prepared to go a full nine yards past Headline Hirst by pickling the remains in modern art-formaldehyde.

Writers of an uncompromising disposition, who in daily life might strive for kindness, should steer clear of people whose work they are likely to encounter, because the writer's overwhelming duty to ridicule propaganda and throttle the lie (rather than the liar) can be compromised by a natural instinct not to cause personal hurt. And I intend no injury to either (or each) in suggesting that Tracey Emin is to art (for want of a better word) what Jordan is to TV and writing (for want of a better word); two walking-talking peep shows with an acquired lust for fame and fortune, whose vacuity is papered over by the status their heavily manufactured celebrity affords them, and whose lives are given currency by the number of fawning heads and lenses pointing their way.
But, if I can (mis)quote Spiderman, the power of the metaphorical pen comes with the great responsibility not to spin a web of words, but to weave it like they bloody-well see it, in spite of the Naked Emperor's low self-esteem or his sensitive disposition.

Sadly, I'm sure there would be no shortage of sponsors and venues for a joint Retrospective of the cultural desolation and justification-by-faith-in-money that our two cultural icons represent
But wait.
I look to my crystal ball and see we may yet be saved from this last tangled two-step on the grave of civilisation.
As the installations for Katie and Tracey's grand celebration are finalised, and the video screens charting the rise of our two vulva-gazing heroines flicker into (un)life, nature decides to intervene. The next ice age descends upon us and their joint retrospective is frozen in nature's formaldehyde: ice and time.
In that far off future, when the ice has melted, celebrity has died a billion deaths and man has emerged once more into the nourishing light of civilisation, what, I wonder, will their historians make of such a pointless spectacle when they unearth it?

And what will they make of a civilisation that promoted and celebrated such worthless tat, and gave it star billing...for no other reason than there was money to be made from it?
If they can be arsed (which I doubt), future historians will rank such 'work' rightly and ruthlessly as less than nothing, because it was spawned by the era that devalued everything with fame and money, and dressed nothing up as art.
The Empress Tracey: A Naked Retrospective indeed.