A portrait of the artist as childish, reckless and dangerously subversive

ARTISTS cannot be trusted. They are politically subversive, financially illiterate, and their management skills are commensurate with their chaotic lives.

Not disliked per se, but distrusted and undependable, artists are like unruly children. They are seldom recognised as adults by a society that cannot understand, and never forgives, their repeated exposure of our banality.

Living banally in safe crevices, people, and politicians and bureaucrats, fantasise through artists’ escapades and genius about that which their own mediocrity and timidity safely barricades them from. The artist, like direct sunlight, is the insight we cannot look in the eye. Attracted and appalled, we celebrate with loose change the achievements of people we clap and cheer, but ultimately fear. The furore in Limerick is a symptom, but only that, of a profound dysfunction in attitudes towards artists. Limerick is not a local row; it is a national scandal.