At last, I have found an intelligent commentary on contemporary artistic practice: a commentary in The Sunday Times of 16.9.01. Prior to this I felt like the boy who insists the Emperor has no clothes on. In both formal and informal conversations, I found that many people regarded the so-called YBAs or young British Artists as a serious or inspiring endeavour. To my dismay, people like Janet Street-Porter adopted a similar position. At the time she had just left her editorship of The Independent, but still had a column. The creations of Lucas, Emin, Hirst et al were - she professed - a legitimate reflection of contemporary life. That's like saying an unpleasantly depressing piece of work is a reflection of a mentally ill person. It may be true, but that is not an encompassing aesthetic judgement; there has to be something else besides that.

Street-Porter suggested that the new kind of art was a cool antidote for stuffy and traditional parameters. That means if you do not agree with it, you are automatically branded as a member of the conservative and boring class of people like the old-school RA officials, outraged at recent YBA showings. I do not accept this flawed logic.

Journalist Bryan Appleyard located the current trends in a wider and more sensible context than the closed-circuit world of artistic practitioners and college art departments. Specifically, he links the bed, the tent, the kebabs and pickled sharks with market valuation and the patronage of Charles Saatchi. If Mr. Saatchi stopped investing in it, the market would vanish: "what we mean by the word 'art' in the contemporary visual world is determined by the dealing habits of Charles Saatchi". It is not an innovative and challenging new trend, but a commercial exercise with capitalist rather than artistic interests. That is not cool at all, but a sophisticated and self-serving marketing technique.

The YBAs promote themselves. They are like soap opera characters we are supposed to be interested in, and Emin's famous Margate origins are her personal script. She insists that there is nothing wrong with making money and being a good businesswoman. I agree. But I object when marketing is presented as an artistic trend.

Appleyard notes the similarities between advertising strategy and YBA practice. Saatchi was responsible for the potent slogans of 1969 and 1978 - "Would you be more careful if it was you that got pregnant?" and "Labour Isn't Working". The former accompanied a picture of a pregnant man, and the latter appeared above an image of dole queue office. Appleyard concludes that "the idea and the image were so tightly bound together that, in effect, they became one, a single statement refined to its essentials. The YBAs, patronized by Saatchi in the 1990s, did exactly the same thing….they produced headline and eye-catching images that had the immediacy and directness of Saatchi's advertising."

Advertising is similar to art, in the sense that success or failure is an intangible outcome. Sales figures are the objective test for advertising - and have become closely linked to artistic value. Saatchi stated that the YBAs "have an entrepreneurial spirit that is very new for British artists and indeed unique throughout the world". Clearly, his business experience gives him some authority, and the financial success of the most famous YBAs is well known. But what are we talking about here: art or commerce? There is nothing wrong with combining the two but if we value artistic endeavour, commercial success should not be regarded as its defining criteria. How un-cool is that?

Appleyard quotes critic Peter Fuller, who stated that indulgent and egotistical art is a development of Saatchi's advertising: "The Saatchi's spend their working lives promoting a dominant cultural form, ie advertising, which allows no space for the social expression of individual subjectivity." When art is conceptual rather than craft based, evaluating it becomes an exercise of rhetoric. There are no aesthetic questions because there is no aesthetic, beyond the adolescent urge to 'shock'. A social and sexual life hung implicitly over Emin's bed, like the faint odour from her soiled underwear. In one conversation I had, the other person insisted that this 'experience' justified the exhibit. We would wonder exactly what had happened on the bed, and with whom. This kind of comment is frequently combined with the assertion that you do not 'understand' the artist and what they are trying to do. My point is there is very little to understand, and I do not need to travel to London to grasp the concept.

Another argument frequently used to counter objections is that the YBAs 'did it first'. That is, it may be true that anyone could put together exhibits like the bed, tent etc, but the point is they did it first. It has become a criteria which gives their work credibility. I once lived in a shared house in Brighton where there was a young man on psychiatric medication. I would frequently go downstairs in the morning, and find that he had built little nests around the living room composed of plant pots, domestic implements, garden soil, sweet wrappers and anything else that attracted him. There was nothing cool about this; it was a disturbing experience I had to endure while I looked for somewhere else to live.

The bed, tent etc. were stage sets, designed to create a kind of theatrical experience. Here is my bed, and my new pyjamas. Mr. Saatchi, I will accept no less than £10, 000 for this image.