Who is to blame for this alarming picture of contempt?

Surely Serota is itching to tell the office workers of Britain why they need a Hirst in the atrium

"I may not know much about art; but I know what I want in my atrium." That seems to be the considered view of Britart from the nation's office workers, to judge from a survey this week by ICM for the organisation Arts & Business. The survey found that three quarters of those asked would prefer to work in an environment where there is art. Picasso was the workers' choice as the artist they would most like on the walls (18 per cent), while Damien Hirst was the least popular choice, securing just 4 per cent of the vote.

Colin Tweedy, the chief executive of Arts & Business, was quoted as concluding: "There is an assumption among the powerbrokers of the land that people like contemporary art. The Turner Prize attracts huge queues, but who are these people? The majority of people genuinely don't understand contemporary art. The chattering classes of Notting Hill will go to the opening of the Saatchi Gallery, but most people think it's rubbish. Most of the general public are revolted by dead cows."

Now, this is alarming. I have known the estimable Mr Tweedy for some years. As the man responsible for brokering partnerships between arts venues and business sponsors, he is an influential figure with the ear of ministers. If the man who leads businessmen and women to the arts and the arts to businessmen and women publicly admits that most people think contemporary art is rubbish, one can assume he is echoing the views of his business clients.

The easy response is to brand them philistines. But it is too easy a response. For, as the Arts & Business chief also says, most people genuinely don't understand contemporary art. Not understanding an art form all too easily leads to people labelling it rubbish. Blaming the public for not understanding is the easy solution. I blame the heads of our contemporary art galleries; I blame the judges on the Turner Prize; I blame Channel 4, the prize's sponsor. What we have is a failure to explain, a failure by the champions of contemporary art to make their enthusiasm infectious and to find a language to convey the artistry and spirituality of the best of contemporary art.

It is worth remembering that when Ivan Massow, then chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, denounced much of conceptual art as "pretentious, self-indulgent, craftless tat" last year, the response of the contemporary art establishment was to force him out of his post as quickly as possible. No one bothered to meet his arguments head on. I hope the same fate doesn't await my friend Mr Tweedy. Surely, Sir Nicholas Serota is itching to tell the office workers of Britain why they really do need a Hirst or an Emin or a Whiteread in the atrium.

*Another thing that struck me in the Arts & Business survey was how arts organisations manage to put an ever-optimistic interpretation on numbers attending cultural events. The A&B survey found that "in the last year, 43 per cent of staff had visited the theatre, while over a third of workers had been to a museum (37 per cent), art gallery (34 per cent) or music concert (33 per cent)." Mr Tweedy saw this as proof that we are a nation with "a great cultural tradition, past and present." But I'm always inclined to turn such statistics around to get a truer picture of cultural Britain. If 37 per cent of workers have visited a museum in the past year, then 63 per cent have not been anywhere near one. Thirty-three per cent have been to a concert; so 67 per cent have not. Likewise art gallery visits. Indeed, these statistics show that the arts have failed to capture the imagination, certainly failed to capture the attendance, of the majority of those surveyed. Suddenly, the nation's cultural tradition is looking less robust.

*The New Statesman, which celebrates its 90th anniversary this week, has republished its very first edition, from March 1913, along with its current issue. I couldn't resist turning to the magazine's inaugural theatre review to see how critics performed just before the First World War. The critic was reviewing Arnold Bennett's The Great Adventure. One sentence stuck out: "There is no mistaking the ring of applause in the Kingsway Theatre; in volume perhaps hardly equal to the hard, persistent clapping of a hundred conscientious hands, which often on first nights raises the curtain three or four times and the author's hopes, but in quality significant."

Not only does the reviewer imply that there tended to be clap-happy audiences at first nights, but he also feels competent to review the quality of the applause. Indeed, he goes on to sniff at "loud guffaws", noting that "people often laugh the louder for having been bored." Theatre critics before the First World War were clearly possessed of a skill that present-day reviewers must envy: the ability to determine the potential success of a play by the quality rather than quantity of applause and laughter. One can imagine the billboards outside the theatre: "The audience laughed quietly and applauded softly – a surefire hit!"

d.lister@independent.co.uk