No other sphere of serious culture defers to youth as obsessively as the art world. Theatres may seek out young dramatists, newspapers make a fuss of young novelists, but no one refuses to read Ian McEwan's latest novel because he's no longer the twenty-something who wrote First Love, Last Rites.
The other day, listening to speakers at Tate Britain on contemporary art, it was striking how they fell over themselves to stress how the youngest generation is even younger than the last one. Patrick Brill, aka Bob and Roberta Smith, pointed out how the new generation watch YouTube rather than television and critic JJ Charlesworth outdid him by saying the young are now so globalised they think they should have been allowed to vote in the US election. Both spoke in tones of utter reverence, enforcing the idea that "we have to keep up."
I found myself wondering what the logical conclusion of this might be. The latest generation don't give a damn about Damien Hirst or Martin Creed. They're more into Iggle Piggle and Upsy Daisy.
Youthfulness was injected into the withered arm of British art 20 years ago with the arrival of a generation soon labelled "YBAs", Young British Artists. That's the rhetoric that sold British art in the 90s and still sells it today. But is it really true any longer?
The art world's pursuit of youth actually disguises a freeze in the age range of "emerging" artists, for the "new" approaches of today's Turner winners tend to have been developed in tension with, as a rebellion against, the YBA aesthetic of their contemporaries. Thus Mark Leckey, last year's Turner winner, was born in 1964 - he's older than Damien Hirst.
So in fact, art now is much like the novel or drama - its leading practitioners are middle aged. There is no historical law that says they must be massacred by hordes of 20-year-olds when they reach 50. Especially when grown adults continue to wallow in adolescent pop culture.
