Page 50 - Studio International - September 1970

Commentary For the record, here is some background art jokes in Latin and dreaming of delicate
history, grumpy autobiographical confessions poetry. I retain an instinctive sympathy with
of an art lover; but experiences that have been hooliganism, however, and it's not my fault if
Timothy Hilton common. it often emerges when I think about painting.
When I was a lad, ten years ago, life after Why, for instance, has no-one ever remarked
work was simple, as we flexed ourselves in the the extent to which painting has been the
hairy pleasures of youth; a few pints, some home ground of Tories? I used to feel very
amount of wenching, roaring devotion to the bitter about this, and refuse to be polite on the
hapless Villa. Quantum mutatus ab illo Hectore ! subject now. In one way, the Tories of ten
Interest in the visual arts can quickly trans- years ago stereotyped themselves to such an
form one into a spineless aesthete, making extent that their very risibility subsumed