Ontario College of Art and Design student Thorarinn Ingi Jonsson is facing nuisance and mischief charges after it is alleged that his "artwork" caused a major scare in downtown Toronto:

An Ontario College of Art and Design student who created a video about a bomb going off at the Royal Ontario Museum for a class project was also behind the bomb hoax at the museum Wednesday night that forced its evacuation and disrupted a high profile AIDS fundraiser.

Thorarinn Jonsson, 24, said yesterday he never expected the final piece in his art project to result in such an "overreaction", since he left a note on the suspicious package indicating it was not a bomb.

"I expected police to take it seriously, and then to quickly realize what they were dealing with," Mr. Jonsson told City News.

"It's clearly a sculpture, but taking it out of context and putting it into another context by leaving it lying around, it certainly takes on a different meaning," he admitted.

Clearly a sculpture? The photo of Thorarinn Ingi Jonsson holding the pipe bomb "sculpture" printed in the Torontoist shows it is nothing of the sort. It is clearly a bomb, at least to the naked eye.

Of course, police took it seriously enough to evacuate the AIDS fundraiser taking place at the ROM and call in the bomb squad.

Thorarinn seems to believe everyone is overreacting, while missing the importance of the art:

"I'm taking something that's clearly a sculpture. It's clearly not a bomb. But by taking it out of context and putting it into another context, by leaving it lying around ... it suddenly takes on a different meaning."

Does he feel bad about the effect it had? "I think the piece is pretty important ... Police waste their time all the time doing all kinds of things."

At this point, Thorarinn will have to convince the justice system that his art trumps concerns for public safety. Indeed, on his OCAD page, Thorarinn lists the destruction of the World Trade Center as his "favourite work of art".

Which got me thinking.

Is all conceptual art at its core an expression of cowardice?

Thorarinn is a man with questionable artistic talent. People who go into conceptual art do so because of their lack of craft, craft being the flip side of true art. An artist is first and foremost a craftsman, able to work in paint or stone or film or whatever. After mastering his chosen medium, he might discover that he is also an artist. Many craftsmen never make that leap.

Putting aside the laziness inherent in picking a 9/11 as his favourite artwork ("I want to be controversial, hmmm. I know! Say something nice about 9/11! Being controversial is easier than I thought!"), what medium is he thinking of when he calls 9/11 art? There isn't one, of course. There doesn't need to be one for the conceptual artist.

His art is something entirely conceptual, without physical expression. And that makes the art so much easier. Cowardly, really. Working in concepts means not having to show you know how to work with wood or clay or whatever. It means never having to be criticized for not knowing how to handle a chisel or a paintbrush.

It also means skipping years of apprenticeship, and the possibility, nay, the probability, that at the end of the training the would-be artist is told he'll never be more than a very accomplished and respected craftsman.

That's a scary thought for someone who wants only to be an artiste, regardless of his true talent. Too scary for Jonsson and his fellow conceptual artists. Better to work in a medium that cannot be objectively evaluated.

In this case, Jonsson works in "context":

Inspired by Marcel Duchamp's readymades pieces (the most famous of which is the urinal-cum-art-piece Fountain), Jonsson wanted to make a piece for his final project about recontextualization: the idea that the context changes the meaning of a piece of art; in this case, something that is "quite clearly not dangerous, but when you put it in a different context the viewer recontextualizes it": a fake pipe bomb, and fake YouTube videos showing its fake explosion.

Oh, I get it. Jonsonn's art is brilliant. It is the fault of the police and other dolts who did not correctly recontextualize his work. They ought to have recognized their kneejerk recontextualization for what it was, and then commended Jonsson for having forced them to come to terms with their recontextualicitation.

OK, I'm pretty sure that last word isn't real. But that's ok. I'm conceptualizing a new word. It's blogging art.

But dig a bit deeper, and you see the cowardice again:

Though Jonsson intended to leave the pipe bomb outside of the bag out in the open in a "noticeable spot," "almost like a presentation," he says there were "too many people around," and he decided to keep the sculpture inside the bag, placing it on the right-hand side of the ROM's Bloor Street entrance with the declarative note visible on top.

Too afraid to show his art to random civilians in the lobby of a museum?

I'm intrigued that he did not deposit his piece in the lobby of the US Consulate on University Avenue. That would certainly have been a masterpiece of recontextualization. The blood pools from his bullet-ridden body would have added some poignancy.

But then again, there is the cowardice at play. His favourite artists, the 9/11 terrorists, paid the ultimate price for their art. Of all the targets -- sorry, not targets, but canvasses -- in Toronto he could have used to showcase his bomb art, he picked a museum. Not a police station, for example.

Even the note "This is not a bomb" was cowardly. He only put it there because the OCAD Student Union lawyer told him to:

Attached to the bomb was a note that read "This is not a bomb." Jonsson thought that the note meant he wasn't breaking the law: he had been advised by an OCAD Student Union lawyer before installing the piece, he says, against spreading false news, and told that he should not attempt to deceive people about the bomb's legitimacy.

I wonder if this lawyer was one of the suspended OCAD staff connected to the incident. In any case, a thorough review by the Ontario Bar Association should clear up the question of whether a lawyer who is told by someone that they are going to plant something that looks like a real bomb in a public location can avoid legal problems by attaching a note is a lawyer who ought to face disciplinary action.

Is this guy even a lawyer? Perhaps he was just some person chosen for his chronic stupidity, deliberately put in an office with "Lawyer" on the door. That led Thorarrin to recontextualize this idiot and to take his ridiculous advice seriously. Maybe Thorarrin was done in by another OCAD art project.

That would be ironic.

But this is about Thorarrin, and not about dullards impersonating lawyers.

To me, this entire episode highlights the fundamental cowardice that underlies modern art. I think a lot of people recognize that on some level, which is why no one respects artists nowadays. Except other artists, of course.

If convicted, Thorarinn faces up to five years in prison.