JMW Turner was always going to end up on a placemat. He spent a good part of his time idealising nature and worked in a beige chromatic suited to the matronly wardrobes of Darling Point. If critics of the nineteenth century had seen Sleepless in Seattle they’d have recognised Turner as the Meg Ryan of his art form.

The guy made pretty, lambent pictures. Of the sort guaranteed to make your date feel needy. Go on. Give us a cuddle.

It’s odd, then, that a bloke with all the radical vigour of toast should lend his name to one of visual art’s strangest awards. The Turner Prize has again been gifted to some tosser who’ll be reviled by London cabbies at least until Christmas; office workers will collect their winnings in Turner Prize sweepstakes.

That everyone in Britain seems to have an opinion about this 23-year-old po-mo decoration is, possibly, a good thing for public life. Although, the opinion is usually “f-ck off” or “My kid could have done that.”

In reviewing this year’s winner, however, the critique might proceed more properly along the lines of, “My mate’s grating and multiply pierced kid at RMIT could have done that. In fact they did last semester.”

Mark Wallinger offers delighted patrons two-and-a-half hours of footage featuring him dressed as a bear wandering around a German Art Gallery. This hardly strikes me as daring. If you have ever treated yourself to some kunst, you’ll allow that blokes shuffling about in ursine suits are fairly standard. German. Art. Gallery. Bear suit. Made for each other. This gesture is as unremarkable as me wearing velour tracksuit with the word “Whore” embroidered on the ar-e to Chadstone Shopping Mall. (Not that I do. I leave this indiscretion to the rumpled mothers of four-year-olds.)

It is, however, what we expect from the Turner Prize. With few exceptions, such as Gilbert and George, the work is always a bit silly.

You will recall, no doubt, Damien Hirst’s heifer, shark and sheep in tanka. Brian Sewell of the London Evening Standard said it best, “I don’t think pickling something and putting it into a glass case makes it a work of art… It is no more interesting than a stuffed pike over a pub door.”

Artist Martin Creed was almost funny with his Work 227: The lights going on and off. (It was lights going on and off.) But you might be tempted to wonder: how long can artists continue to p-ss on visual culture with more rancour than Pollock and still hope to fertilise a future?

Turner’s greatest moment came in 1993. Extraordinary artists Bill Drummond and James Cauty of the Kopyright Liberation Front had made far too much money from their pop career. They doubled the cash sum reserved for Turner Prize recipients and established the K Foundation Award.

Their shortlist for a prize to the “worst art in Britain” was identical to the Turner. It was presented on the steps of the Tate as the she-bang unfolded inside. Needless to impart, the winner of the Turner was the winner of the KLF’s art award. Unfortunately, Rachel Whiteread refused to acknowledge the prize.

These lads had simultaneously been working on a longform piece Money: A Major Body of Cash. This involved the ruin of about $UK1m.

That’s art. And, no, your kid couldn’t have done that.