“Filler” is a term often used by music fans to describe songs that sound like they were quickly put together to take up space on an album in order to “fill out” the running time. Though  filler can often be quite good, snobbier music fans sometimes use it as an excuse to turn their noses up at others. Ironically, this attitude can be just as annoying as the people the snobs want to put down.

I make my living as a Photoshop retoucher. Much of the work I do is celebrity related, and often involves those showy magazine spreads where a B-list celebrity shows off his or her home. It’s MTV Cribs for older generations (in other words, those who still read). What I often find in the photos are startling similarities in artistic taste.

Seemingly every one of these celebrities has the same coffee-table book collection, including books on Picasso, jazz, and Man Ray. It’s as if the photographer carries a satchel of the same books to each celebrity’s house simply for the automatic class boost they provide.

It seems impossible to me that so many people actually have those books because they enjoy the artists’ work. A friend of mine brought up the cynical idea that this is what you get when you allow the masses access to art — great works often become, in effect, filler. The coffee-table book industry is, in many ways, a seller of white noise, used by individuals who hope to give their home an aesthetic boost.

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