The building is ugly and the inside is confusing. There are people everywhere and you have to look around for a while before you find the escalator that takes you to the main gallery.

Most of the people have come to the gallery for reasons other than art. They are there to socialise and drink a coffee, or to meet friends. The art is secondary. This environment perfectly sums up Melbourne and its attitude towards art. The paintings themselves are not important, what’s important is sitting around with friends and wanking about the art.

What they don’t realise is art is not supposed to be a social occasion. Galleries are not supposed to be meet-up spots. Anyone who has even the slightest appreciation of art knows that it is best enjoyed alone. Having other people in the room only makes the experience worse. They detract from the overall enjoyment. The only reason you’d want to be surrounded is if you believe art is an intellectual experience to be discussed and not an emotional experience to be felt.

To that end, the more people there are in an art gallery, the less enjoyable it is. Melbourne galleries will never understand this. They think the more people they attract the better it is, but nothing could be further from the truth. All you get is a crowd of pretenders who have read a few books on the subject and wander around repeating their contents, attempting to appear wise and original while other people nod in agreement because they wouldn’t have a clue either way.

The great thing about art is it stops you from thinking for a few brief seconds. Your brain switches off and you feel nothing but awe at how beautiful something can be. For whatever reason people in Melbourne think it is necessary to use their brains and express their opinions when it comes to art. They don’t realise nothing ruins art faster than the noise of opinion.

Melbourne has an art gallery or music venue on every corner, but not a single bit of talent. It is one giant diluted mess of mediocrity. The standards are so low because every upper middle-class bum wearing thrift shop clothing considers himself an artist. There are thousands of them writing the same three songs or painting four pictures before sitting around and congratulating each other. The praise is given so freely it loses all its meaning.

One mediocre artist will praise another mediocre artist knowing they will get to receive some praise in return. They give in order to receive and none of them realise this is what they are doing. Most of them genuinely believe they are great artists and their friends are great artists, but there’s barely a morsel of talent among 10,000 of them. In their hearts they believe the only reason they aren’t famous is because they are too brilliant for the average person to understand.

Any sort of negative opinion is cast out instantly. It is a safe space where delusion is preferred over truth. The irony is nothing would help their artistic endeavours more than a dose of negativity. Praise will kill an artist quicker than anything else. These artists give praise right from the beginning so they are dead right from the start. If only they turned to art for the right reasons, instead of seeking praise, attention, money, or fame. None of them realise art is about salvation. It is what it has always been about. It’s not about pretty pictures and warehouse galleries and patting each other on the back. It is about salvation. It is about looking at a picture and realising it is so awe-inspiring you may as well live for a little bit longer. That life is beautiful because Van Gogh proved it.