I agree with Waldemar Januszczak, writing in The Times today: the recession is going to be good for art. Not for the bloated art world, not for the fat cat dealers and superstar artists, but good for art – which is what the art world used to be all about. As Waldemar points out, "the art world’s chief and most catastrophic problem" is that "as its prices have risen, so its values have collapsed." This collapse in value hasn't benefited all artists, it's simply promoted the charlatans and those with the gift of the gab.

Maybe this recession will provide an opportunity instead for art that tries to engage with the world, to unpick and explore it in all its complexity, to blossom. An art with relevancy, feeling and meaning. Perhaps a breath of fresh air is on the way? They do say a recession is good for creativity.

The art boom we've been experiencing for the last fifteen years has grown out the putting of money as the one arbiter of value. This has meant that hype has become all. An artist that begins to sell well then becomes valued as "good" art, and so the value increases. With this single rule, the art world became built on hype and shock.

And of course, with this, came a rapidly growing disillusionment and sense of powerlessness for most of us – that the money men had won: they held all the cards and dictated the rules.

Now that it is clear that the world they constructed and profited from was as flimsy as a house of cards. Even though we're all experiencing the fall out from the collapse, the one positive thing is knowing that those of us who had become sick of the obnoxious world that had been created around us is being deconstructed.

Waldemar Januszczak's article