Last night, because trade there was so thin, I flung up in haste a Samizdata posting about the Brit Art fire, confining my commentary to having a rather unkind laugh at the expense of all the embarrassed Brit Artists whose work has been destroyed. You guys need to look at reality in a different way. Stop thinking of them as disparate works of art. Blah blah hah hah. Quite a few further comments have accumulated in a similar vein, and if you want to have a cultural read with a Samizdatistan sneering-at-Modern-Art twist to it, you can go there.

But as Michael Jennings said in one of the kinder comments:

Saatchi has spent a lot of time putting the collection together, I am sure he valued the art greatly, and when he says that he "feels sick" about the fire, I am sure that this is completely true. If you have put effort into accumulating a big collection of anything, losing it feels painful. So he quite genuinely has my sympathy here. …

I concur. However, as Michael also went on to say:

… On the other hand, if the fire had destroyed ten Turners belonging to the Tate Gallery I would be extremely upset about it, whereas I will confess that finding out about the loss of this art doesn't appear to have affected my morning unduly.

I concur again. Mine neither.

I think this may turn into a rather big story, with an "end of an era" feel to it. Journalists will use it to illustrate the end of the Blair Moment, the final official death of Cool Britannia, etc. Together with The Dome, it all adds to the atmosphere of an New Elite which is not as competent as it ought to be and would like to be. After all, if it can't even stop its own art going up in flames …

My other reaction this evening is that this, from the story linked to above, has got to be one of the newspaper paragraphs of the year so far:

Dinos Chapman last night confirmed that Hell had been destroyed. "It has burnt," he said. "We have had it confirmed by two or three sources."

Shrieks of demonic laughter, and my envious congratulations to Nic Fleming and Will Bennett of the Telegraph.

Further reaction: Something tells me that I and the Samizdata commentariat will not be alone in letting out a whoop of ignoble pleasure at this Brit Art Bonfire. And this time it's going to hurt, which is why it may go on for a while. After all, the catcalls and howls of contempt aimed at Modern Art usually only serve to add to the fuss, to the price, and to the irresistible success of Modern Art. Bourgeois Opinion has learned that Modern Art must not be criticised, because that will only encourage it. Confonted with the latest variant of Duchamp's Urinal, Bourgeois Opinion has learned to bite its tongue.

This, however, is going to be a media frenzy with a difference, one which the Modern Artists will find it much harder to profit from. It is accordingly a chance for Bourgeois Opinion to really put the boot in, at a rare time of Modern Art vulnerability. This time, the Modern Artists will be the ones whose "point of view" will be held up to public ridicule, and whose public squirmings and howls of outrage (at not being accorded sufficient sympathy for their various losses by all the people whom they have spent the last century despising) will only add to the fun. Dinos Chapman's masterpiece of unconscious humour, siezed upon and exhibited for us by those Telegraph guys, may only be the first of many such mirth opportunities.

What can they do? Bundle up the ashes and turn them into yet another aesthetically empty but pseudo-religiously fraught exhibit? This will just be a cue for further derision.

Well, we'll see. Maybe it will be forgotten in a fortnight, by all but the bereaved.