"It's pretty, but is it art?"

Kipling would gag at what passes for art nowadays Only folks who know me well (ok, many folks who even know me only in passing) know just how disgusted I am by much of what passes as "art" nowadays. It's beyond disgust into complete ennervation (cue Madeline Kahn singing "I'm Tired") whenever I attempt to actually talk to people who consider themselves "artists" for farting in public or whatever. While a Francois Villon could make a "fart" the occasion for poetry ("Le Roman du Pet au Diable" for example), most "artists"—and their academic and media "critics"—today mistake their passed gasses for art (and their waste product for vanilla ice cream, no doubt). An example? Gee, try ANY "Top-40" manufactured album or how about this:     "The Gates." *Blech* I mean, really.  This fails even the "It's pretty" part of the question posed in "The Conundrum of the Workshops."  Can anyone say "Airing your dirty laundry in public"? And this is some of the best of "art" hailed by critics as visionary or whatever...   Where's the craftsmanship, the skill, the chops?  No need! "Art" nowadays largely (and successfully) consists of throwing actual (or figurative) feces at buyers and laughing all the way to the bank when they buy the stuff, and it's not even been composted and bagged for use in their garden...