Ashamed to be an Artist

Is this the future of art?
I was lucky enough to spend the afternoon touring the local Wellington Galleries.
I was actually looking forward to seeing some "real" art, as opposed to images on a large projector screen.
I was dismayed at the art that we saw - if you could call it that. The only thing that distinguished it from a bit of scrap doodling by the telephone or GIB board which was once used as a drop cloth on a building site when they were painting - was that they were in a gallery setting.
And not just any gallery. These were dealer galleries - galleries which make a living off selling art! This is meant to be the higher echelon of art. It is meant to be difficult for artists to break through into getting such galleries to take your work; because they have to sell your work to stay open.
But to tell you the truth - much of this stuff wasn't suitable to sell. Corporate businesses wouldn't want it on their wall, and I wouldn't want it in my lounge either!
I have no issue with people creating. Some of the stuff might have been provocative or on an intellectual level. One of the pieces was a temporary wire fence you see at building sites, and was left part open. Inside was a whole stack of papers, and it was the act of walking in and getting one of these papers (which was a theoretical take away art idea) that made the artwork. I have no issue with people creating something like that. But my issue is that it is done in the name of art. It is blasphemy! Call yourself an exhibitionist - not an artist! To be an artist requires some sort of skill and talent, some sort of passion and control in which you create art which the masses applaud. To be an artist is to strive to better your counterparts and to walk in the footsteps of the grand masters of yesteryear.
It comes down to the a big question which I pose to you now...

What happened to the talent and the skill to be an artist?

What became of the decades it took the masters serving as aprenticship under an artist, learning the trade and the skills all before they could even touch paint onto a canvas and create?
What of the likes of da Vinci, Rembrandt, Turner, Van Gogh, Monet? They're all known by their last names for a reason! They all mastered their skill, bringing their art to the highest status they could get it. Continually striving to make it better, to make it more vibrant, to make it more realistic or more impressionistic, giving it life!

You hear people say it all the time... "I'm no good at art."
Well, after traveling these galleries there is no reason why anyone couldn't do this stuff.
To which you'd find the reply to be - "Exactly - but it took my genius to realize that and put this stuff as art into a gallery, and that is art..."
To which I would say - "Have you no respect for what it means to be an artist? To create beauty on canvas; to have the skill and the creative talent to create something which is appealing and worthy of being called art?"
If what I saw today is the future of art, and that the preconceptions of what an artist is, is someone who creates that stuff, then I am ashamed to call myself an artist.
I am sure that the likes of Rembrandt, David, Turner and Monet are turning in their graves this very instant.