Art: my part in its downfall

Pierre d’Alancaisez | The Critic | 15th May 2026

A mea culpa from an art dealer turned art critic. As a twenty-something in optimistic London, the writer was a “faithful adherent” of contemporary art and started a for-profit gallery that focused on “peripheral” Left politics. Over a decade or more, art world discourse started to emphasis identity and “wokeness” and he slowly fell out of step. Now a critic, he thinks art is in “catastrophic decline”. Somewhere in all of this is a sense of his regret, but about what? Perhaps it is that too much political art forgets to be artistic.