I"ll play the role of devils advocate and put forward a defence towards art,when i was at school two of my favourite subjects were History and Art.
What is the point of art ? imo it is imagination, it is about being creative and thinking on different levels.
What has art given us the human race ? Before mankind became imaginative - humans did not have the capability to wonder or be curious about the mysteries that surrounded them. The human brain had not yet evolved the necessary cells and pathways to be capable of absract imagination. The Neandertals were extremely intelligent beings but were not capable of Human Imagination,so in a way imagination,being creative or just challenging society"s views and beliefs through art or the arts, has shaped society as we know it today in western culture.
Society"s or should i say goverments even in recent times have tried to ban or suppress art - the nazis did it, Hitler saw it as a war against imagination and the vision of the other,this being something that he believed would bring the masses under his control.The communists in Russia [stalin] and china [Chairman Mao Zedong - died 1976 thank god] until recently all raged a war towards art,all in the belief that it created free thinking !!
Modernist art began in the sixties and has changed everyones views on what art is,you can blame Andy Warhol for that.Now what is classed as art is very broad but it still involves imagination and free thinking something that the art police,those of the fine arts still cant accept.
The turner prize harms no one,why ridicule it ?
so ends my argument