Emma Brand takes exception to the rhetoric of retailing.
Nothing wrong with cheap. Good to see students being offered sizeable discounts. A fine example is the Cass Art discount day in Islington on 8 October, with 15 per cent off everything, free food, music and entertainment, and a goody bag containing £50 worth of stuff for anyone spending more than £10.
But why so much other stuff which is at best unnecessary and at worst extremely irritating? I’m talking about this retailer’s ‘manifesto’ which begins, ‘Cass Art believes in art. We know the freedom and creative pleasure it brings.’ With phrases such as we’re ‘on a mission to fill this country with artists’, the day to day business of selling artists’ materials is transformed, allegedly, into life enhancing activity as important as art itself.
It makes sense for a political party to declare what it believes in, just as it makes sense for a new artistic movement to announce what kind of art it believes it.
But Cass Art (and others), please note: you are a shop selling paint, paper and brushes; the meaning of life is not yours to tell (or sell).