The art wars have shown once more that the "creatives" of our times are in danger of getting a little full of themselves. Works of genius immeasurably greater and more original than many we see now were produced by artists in circumstances that today's generation are unlikely ever to face. 

The DIY Stravinsky example also reminds us of the inflation that afflicts every aspect of our arts institutions. Now is an excellent time to cast a harshly appraising eye over their spending, with a view to maintaining quality and junking the rest. The need for yet more provincial galleries of low-grade, derivative contemporary art must now be questioned, and those that are an embarrassment to the nation should be shut. Anything to do with popular music must be hived off to the multi-billion pop industry itself. Superfluous curators and semi-literate arts publicity types of the kind that infest the Arts Council must go too. 

The response will be that it is absurd to suggest that orchestras be reduced to seven players, art galleries boarded up or theatres left to the mercy of donors. We must choose between paying what it takes for the arts, I shall be told, and a sordid populism. It is of course possible to end up with both, as Tate Modern has shown.

The painter Walter Sickert mocked the illusions of earnestly progressive folk who lamented the dearth of state subsidies. People appeared to believe that the whole future of art would be determined by a bundle of cash "secreted somewhere in the Treasury", he wrote. Art being eternal, we must expect the lamentations — and the illusions — to continue.