A few years ago, some of Damien Hirst’s work sold for a mindbogglingly large amount of money. It made something like $50 million, if I remember correctly.

Damien Hirst is the guy who makes enormous thin slices of dead cows and suspends them in glass. I was confused, because the article kept referring to the work as “art.”

“That is not art,” I thought, no doubt accompanied by millions of other people sitting in their kitchens reading The New York Times.

“Art” is the stuff that you take with you when the Nazis are coming. You know — “They’re coming! Quick! Hide the Monet!”

And if you had a Damien Hirst life-size cow-slice-embedded-in-glass?

“The Nazis are coming! Quick!…err, no, never mind.”

The only possible use for it in that scenario is during a general blockade, during which the formerly wealthy art patrons break open the glass and try to salvage something edible. Art is what you hide from the Nazis; everything else is just…everything else.