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Wednesday. February 23, 2005 iftix. Basic Black by Arthur Black But is it art? I was shocked . and saddened saddened to learn from my morning morning paper that 'Ilium has lost his case in the Federal Court of Appeal. Ilium - real name Brent McClelland - is a conceptual artist who lives in Calgary. He was appealing to Ottawa to allow him to write off unpaid back taxes plus ten year's worth of living expenses incurred while he developed his theory of art. His theory of art? - Well, being a conceptual artist, Ilium had managed to boil it down to a single image, which he unveiled before the federal judges as Exhibit A. It was an empty picture frame (illustrates the decline of creativity, don't you see?). The judges gave Ilium a thumbs down, ruling that, while a vacant frame may or may not be a work of art, it was something less than a viable business enterprise. Needless to say, Ilium is dismayed dismayed as are his supporters, who called the ruling 'troubling'. 'troubling'. They say that judges should not be determining what could be considered art. Perhaps not. But I wish somebody would step up to the plate. I don't care if it's a CFL linesman, Stephen Lewis, Mister Blackwell, Don Cherry - anybody but the bozos who currently tell us what is and what is not art. Such as? Well, such as the London geniuses who awarded awarded the most recent $35,000 Turner Prize to British ceram- icist Grayson Perry for his 'seductive' pots. Mister Perry -- 43 years old, six feet tall and married - showed up to collect his prize dressed as his alter ego, Claire. Which is to say, wearing a blonde page boy wig, a frilly blouse and a flouncy skirt a la Bo Peep. Now I don't personally care whether Mister Perry dresses up like Shirley Temple, Big Bird or The Incredible Hulk, but were his pots - glazed depictions of abused children, lacerated socialites and landscapes of "burned-out cars stalked by murderous moppets" - really the very best that the British Art World could summon up in 2004? I guess so. Perry's pots went on to be featured at London's prestigious Tate Gallery - along with his closest closest competition - a bronze sculpture by the Chapman Brothers showing blowup dolls performing oral sex on each other. I suppose such developments developments in the art world shouldn't shouldn't be surprising - particularly not in Britain. After all, a survey survey last year of the 500 most powerful people in the British art world - artists, dealers, critics and curators in museums museums and galleries -- revealed that a majority of them (64 percent) had a clear winner in mind when it came to naming the single most influential work of art in the 20th century. century. . A Picasso, perhaps? A Monet or Manet? A Matisse? A de Kooning? A Bacon? No, it was a men's porcelain porcelain urinal, signed 'R.Crum: 1917'. Granted, it was actually submitted to a New York art exhibition in 1917 by the famous French artist Marcel Duchamp. Simon Wilson, excurator excurator of the Tate Gallery gushed, "It's got everything: rich metaphor, it's scatological, scatological, it breaks social conventions conventions and it's very, very provocative." You could render the same judgment about the Duchess of York breaking wind during a speech from the throne - but what's that got to do with Art? Besides, whatever else the Crum/Duchamp 'installation' may be called, it is also undeniably undeniably a piece of plumbing ripped from the wall of a Paris pissoir. Where is the Art? And how does Duchamp get to hitchhike on the coattails of some anonymous sanitary engineer? What next - somebody wins The Turner for a triptych of dayglo painted VCR's? I'll tell you what's next. In fact, it's already happened. A gallery in Cape Town, South Africa is featuring an exhibit of famous 17th century Dutch Masters. Except all of the paintings are turned to face the wall. Visitors to the exhibit are confronted confronted with row upon row of Vermeers, Hals, Steens and Rembrandts--as seen from the back. Curator Andrew Lamprecht says the reversal "forces gallery goers to reconsider reconsider their preconceptions about the art." "These are fascinating things to see from behind," says Lamprecht. Backs of paintings! Why, that's almost as brilliant and revolutionary as...as vacant picture frames! Man, that Ilium! A genius just slightly ahead of his time. fop Main Street, Orono Proprietors: Gary, Carol & Cory Vreeker • Weddizig Cakes • Cakes for till Occasions • Pastries - Donuts - Pies • Bread & Buns 905-983-9779 Closed Sunday and Monday rsi MORRIS FUNERAL CHAPEL LTD. SERVING DURHAM REGION SINCE 1841 ALL FUNERAL SERVICES PREARRANGED AND/OR PREPAID BURIAL-CREMATION-TRANSFERS "WHERE PROFESSIONAL ETIQUETTE IS IMPORTANT" FUNERAL DIRECTORS PAUL R. MORRIS DOUG R. RUTHERFORD 905-623-5480 1 n [VISION ST- BOWMANVILLE - AT QUEEN 3T. GARY M. CONWAY DEBRAD, CAMPKIN llPiiiiSpilllip i i fe:::;: : Mil" 11 • Bills 8 . .. • ,0»* iimiiij! If Every Canadian loves a challenge, right? On average, each Canadian produces five tonnes of greenhouse gases a year. Driving, heating and cooling our homes, using appliances... almost anything we do that uses fossil fuels for energy also creates greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. And these emissions are causing our climate to change. 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