It has to be a tough day, sitting in a folding lawn chair in a public square, a dozen or your artworks displayed on easels or pedestals around you.

Which is why I feel for the forty-odd artists packing the Place Broglie in Strasbourg this Sunday.

Because the people walking this square have distinctly bourgeois tastes, and they’re letting it show.

Now, I am the last person to claim authority, taste or style when it comes to art.

But even I can tell that most of the people here are drawn by the physical qualities of some pieces of art, not their inspiration, their execution or presentation.

What do I mean? They’re shopping for art that will fill a space and impress their friends.

That means a big crowd around the lady who applies photoshop filters to her photos of lone wolves on the horizon, or a fishing shack on a beach. That her photos are mounted in a relatively popular 1:6 proportion doesn’t hurt either.

Ditto for the graffiti artist actually creating near-photo portraits right here on the sidewalk.

“Oh this? The artists also did the “screw authority” tag under the A70 autoroute. He’s authentic in his passion.”

Or the “abstract” painter who layers textures and paint mediums in distinctly angular patterns - a style first popularized by Robin Williams in Moscow on the Hudson

Strangely, the Keith Haring rip-offs aren’t moving, and the startlingly good pop art isn’t drawing a crowd at all.

And forget anything that shows a touch of anger or anguish. The lady with the angry nude watercolours is having an exceptionally cold reception.

Thankfully, the guy trying to move rough charcoal sketches of naked ladies isn’t getting much slack either.

It is depressing, though, to see artists producing more and more of their work in tryptchs or series of small postcard-sized images, to suit the suburban sensibilities of sidewalk art browsers.