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      KARL: I’ve been a bit confused so far.

      BLAKE: Oh yeah? That’s really good news. I wish I was more confused with art. I mean, for me the mark of a good work of art is when I keep looking at it, I keep being baffled by it. So anything that I immediately say ‘oh, that’s beautiful’, ‘that’s a great work of human invention’ or any of those kind of clichés, I think it’s lousy.

      KARL: I’ve just been looking at a pile of bricks and it sort of annoyed me a bit at first. I’m looking at it thinking this is a big joke. Then I’m stood there trying to work it out. Is there one answer to that pile of bricks?

      BLAKE: There better not be. If there is, it’s a crap work of art. I actually think that they look pretty damn good, and that a pile of bricks in a construction yard looks good too, so part of the point is just to make us rethink what it is to look at the world.

      Fair enough, but a construction yard doesn’t charge you $25 to get in. Blake took me over to a piece of art called ‘In Advance of the Broken Arm’, which was a snow shovel hanging from a ceiling. It wasn’t a snow shovel that had been sculpted from stone or made out of glass or anything, it was just a bog-standard snow shovel. What with the bricks and now a shovel, I was wondering if I was in a museum of art or a branch of B&Q! To me this is art for people who have too much time on their hands. I can’t imagine someone in a Third World country getting much from it.

      Blake’s eyes lit up when he saw the shovel. I reckon if he saw me today with the teaspoon hanging from my nose, he’d have me put in a Perspex box next to the pile of bricks. It was more interesting watching Blake’s reaction to the shovel than looking at the shovel itself. But I like people-watching. When I was a kid I got into looking at paintings of normal people doing normal things by a bloke called Lowry. Kids playing in the park or factory workers making their way into work. They were simple images, but you can look at them again and again and see someone doing something you hadn’t noticed before. I used to sit and do my version of these after I’d played out, drawing people I had seen watching a football game on the fields or people knocking around the shops.

      BLAKE: I’ve probably written ten thousand words on this thing. And it still makes me wonder. It’s actually weirder than it looks – most people don’t realise this is not Marcel Duchamp’s snow shovel from 1915; this was remade in the ’60s. These pieces are called ready-mades. The whole point is you went and bought a shovel, and you put it up and that was it, that was the work of art.

      KARL: How much is that worth?

      BLAKE: That’s probably the least interesting question you could possibly ask.

      KARL: I know, but I’m looking at it and thinking it’s a shovel, what’s a shovel doing in here?! So go on, how much?

      BLAKE: I don’t know, they don’t come up for sale very often. I guess not very much, ten million at most. Maybe more, maybe twenty. But not a lot in other words. Because pictures are selling, stupid bits of paint on canvas are selling for two hundred and fifty million dollars. I mean Marcel Duchamp’s one of the biggest bargains you can get.

      KARL: Ten million dollars? That’s ridiculous.

      BLAKE: Yeah, but it’s all ridiculous. I mean, the fact that anyone has ten million dollars to spend on something that you can’t use is sickening and criminal. My favourite thing in the world is to have my notebook, or to have a friend with me, and to spend at least an hour with one work of art.

      KARL: What? An hour looking at a snow shovel?

      BLAKE: Yeah! It’s easy. You and I could do it easily, in fact. I mean, you spend two or three hours looking at a football match, right? Or a movie?

      KARL: An hour’s worth of thought, on a shovel? All right, so what should I do then? If I’m going to look at this and try and get more from it, what should I be thinking?

      BLAKE: First of all, I don’t think you should be thinking, I think you should be talking or writing, because the notion of contemplation I just don’t buy. It has to be active. There has to be a real engagement with the work, just as if you’re watching a football game. You’re constantly talking, thinking, screaming at them. Scream at Marcel Duchamp, tell him that you think he’s useless.

      KARL: I feel a bit . . . a bit sorry for it.

      BLAKE: For the work?

      KARL: Yeah, because it was made to be a shovel and it’s not. It’s like looking at an animal in a zoo. Where you know it’s not really doing what it’s meant to do.

      BLAKE: That’s interesting. You’ve just said one of the most interesting things I’ve heard about a Marcel Duchamp. Can I pretend I said that?

      KARL: You’re just taking the . . .

      BLAKE: No, I’m serious. To look at this from the point of view of the shovel is a genuinely original thought that has not been had. See, that’s what happens if we spend enough time on it: new stuff happens. That’s what art does, it makes new stuff happen.

      The thing is, it would have been easy to just say it was all shit and walk away, but because I didn’t, I had a good time chatting with Blake about art. Still think ten million quid for a shovel is ridiculous, though.

      MAKING ART

      The next part of my trip was not just about looking but actually getting involved in the art. First up, I was meeting an artist called Trina Merry. Her thing is to create art using human bodies and a load of body paint. She was making human sculptures of the twelve astrological signs by getting her volunteers to squeeze and huddle together to create the shapes. Once in position, she applied body paint to bring the image to life before she took a photo. I was looking forward to getting involved in this as it was something I could have a copy of once it was all finished. I’ve never been one for taking photographs. I only use my phone camera for taking a shot of the gas or electric meter reading so I don’t have to write down the long number. I think this is because my mam and dad didn’t bother with photos much when I was growing up. My mam hates having her photograph taken as she never likes how she looks and she always turns away or covers her face like some criminal coming out of the Old Bailey. God knows what we would do if she ever went missing as we’d have nothing to give the police to help identify her.

      We were all pretty hopeless at taking photographs too. There would always be a finger over the lens or heads would be missing altogether. If anyone in our family had a photographic memory it would be useless, as everyone’s heads would be missing. When we did take photos we never got round to getting them developed. We’d go on holiday to Wales for four weeks and only take one roll of film, so before taking any snaps there was always a big discussion as to whether or not it was worth taking a photo, which led to not many being taken. One roll of film could last for ages and by the time we actually got it developed, the photos showed me going from six to eleven years old!

      The photo I remember the most from all my holidays growing up is one of Uncle Alf (he wasn’t a real uncle, just me dad’s mate) lying on the sofa in a caravan with a KitKat wrapper stuck to his head. I don’t know how it was agreed that using one of the twenty-four photos for this was justified.

      We

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