Jean Cocteau said something very apposite about this around 75 years ago.
He was talking about writing, but I believe it applies to all kinds of art: “You do not write with ideas. You write with words.”
It is not enough to have a “concept” – which is just jargon for idea, used to impress the gullible. You must have the craft to make it work.
Take objets trouves.
Finding something in the street or on the beach and then displaying it is not art. It is good (or bad) taste and a piece of luck. Tracey Emin’s dirty knickers are not art. They are the detritus of an imaginative slut.
