Brian Sewell's 9 most withering put downs

Britain's most acerbic art critic has died aged 84

Tom Brooks-Pollock
Saturday 19 September 2015 17:30 BST
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Brian Sewell, outspoken art critic and broadcaster, has died aged 84, it has been announced.

He was well-known for his dismissive view of conceptual and contemporary art and was responsible for many a good put-down. Here are some of his best.

1. On Damian Hirst:

"I take this as licence, for this occasion only, to declare this detestable exhibition fucking dreadful."

2. On the public:

"The public doesn't know good from bad. For this city [Bristol] to be guided by the opinion of people who don't know anything about art is lunacy. It doesn't matter if they [the public] like it."

3. On Banksy:

"Banksy should have been put down at birth. It's no good as art, drawing or painting. His work has no virtue. It's merely the sheer scale of his impudence that has given him so much publicity."

4. On David Hockney:

"Hockney is not another Turner expressing, in high seriousness, his debt to the old master; Hockney is not another Picasso teasing Velázquez and Delacroix with not quite enough wit; here Hockney is a vulgar prankster, trivialising not only a painting that he is incapable of understanding and could never execute, but in involving him in the various parodies, demeaning Picasso too."

5. On women artists:

"There has never been a first-rank woman artist. Only men are capable of aesthetic greatness. Women make up 50 per cent or more of classes at art school. Yet they fade away in their late 20s or 30s. Maybe it's something to do with bearing children."

6. On the 35 figures from the art world who in 1994 signed a letter to the Evening Standard attacking him for "homophobia" and "misogyny":

"[Many signatories are] the curatrix of innumerable silly little Arts Council exhibitions."

7. Comparing people in Gateshead with people in London:

"By the very nature of the audience in London it is exposed to very much more art and culture and is therefore more sophisticated. There is no doubt about it."

8. On Liverpool:

"The British armpit."

9. On graffiti:

"The two words 'graffiti' and 'art' should never be put together."

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