Matthew Collings, like all critics, “has made a career out of parasitism. Without Damien’s shark and Tracey’s bed, we wouldn’t know his name.” He was the critic who talked us through all the wierdnesses of BritArt and the YBAs. But now he’s in a different mood: “We don’t live in a great time for art; we live in a time when art is very successful as a leisure activity. Art is very amusing, but within that culture there’s still a hierarchy of better and worse. I’m interested in that hierarchy but I recognise that modern art and pre-modern art were very important, and postmodern art is rubbish, really.”