The Turner prize is boring

Inside Tate Britain on Monday night, a fashionable London audience will applaud the award of the £25,000 Turner prize to whatever is judged the best thing a British artist under the age of 50 can come up with.

Standing outside will be a group of Stuckists protesting against the overlord who for nearly a quarter of a century has ruled this process. Sir Nicholas Serota chaired the prize until 2007, yet still retains his grip. It is he who has made figures such as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin so famous and rich. Yet this year, for the first time, there are finally signs that the Serotan winter is beginning to thaw.

The protestors rage against an art establishment that long ago embraced conceptual art as a dogma, taught that skill is a dirty word, turned art history into a vehicle for cultural Marxism and the rubbishing of genius, indoctrinated generations of art students with the belief that if you say it’s art then it’s art and that success is impossible without fluency in the language of conceptual art-speak.