Every artist’s favourite conversation topic

Commerce has always deferred conversationally to art.  It’s assumed that painters and writers are fascinating talkers, but from the Mermaid to the Colony room, I think they’ve only ever had one subject: money and their lack of it, or the outrageously unfair amounts of it bestowed on (naturally) less talented peers.

The legendary wit of the Algonquin was a myth fabricated to cadge martinis: Dorothy Parker and Scott Fitzgerald weren’t doing anything at the Round Table other than slagging off their agents”.

One effect of the credit bore though, is to induce a positive perkiness amongst creative types. At dinner at silkmaker Felix Spicer’s  boho-baroque railway arch last week, a rather alarming optimism prevailed. For once, instead of moaning, four artists, two writers a composer and a film director merrily predicted a recession renaissance. People are bound to get more serious minded, spending their hoarded cash on literary novels and staying at home to listen to Lutoslawski.