As if the New Republic’s 2005 article on how Formalism killed art wasn’t enough, this weekend I happened to have a conversation with a friend’s father who is a longtime art collector. He complained about the sad state of the art world, how the “me too” and “one-hit wonder” quality has spilled over from music and fashion. Additionally, galleries these days seem unable to differentiate between “a shitty piece by a good artist” and “a good piece by a shitty artist.” I told him that I felt a lot of artists failed to ask themselves the fundamental question: “does the message suit the medium?” If they bothered to do this, they’d probably end up with art that resembled a short story rather than a New Yorker cartoon.

So he had planned on spending the day cruising art galleries in Chelsea, but after entering a tiny, 400-square-foot space with 180 pieces nauseatingly crammed onto the walls where none of them stood out on their own strongly enough, he ended up buying a bresaola, chevre and arugula sandwich for his daughter.

It was delicious.