“You see? In over four hundred years, according to this particular “artist”, there has been no progression in art at all. He’s used traditional – in other words, conservative and safe – techniques, materials, methods and subject matter. He’s taken no risks, no chances. He’s doing all he can to send painting back to the fucking Stone Age. Fuck that! Artists should be taking art forward – moving away from outdated methods, techniques, materials and subjects. If they’re not doing that it means that they have an agenda that involves tradition, rules, nostalgia, and a pretended and contrived innocence. It means they’re fascistic.”

I have to admit, that at this point I felt I was in the presence of a raving lunatic. How anyone could consider a harmless landscape watercolour to be a signifier for fascism was beyond me. Did that make Constable’s The Hay-Wain a secret Neo-Nazi emblem?

“You’re exaggerating greatly,” I said.

“If you think I’m exaggerating, then tell me that you honestly think that uniformly-regimented farmer’s fields and chalk dregs from plundered and exhausted and worn-out mines are beautiful – especially when rendered so photographically in insipid watercolours. Tell me honestly that it’s a “natural” outdoor scene that you’ve seen recently and enjoyed. Or, if that’s too difficult, tell me that it’s a “real” piece of countryside you’d like to see more of and more often.”

“Well, put like that…”

“That is what is represented. And you said you liked it. You think it’s “a good painting”. Don’t deny it. Don’t change your stance because of a little aesthetic and politically charged rhetoric. Some people like depictions of raped land. I don’t. Some people believe in the scorched earth policy. It’s their right. I’m just not one of them – that’s my right.”

“You’ve obviously thought about this picture before,” I ventured. “Why?”

“Because I worry about the state of art,” he said. “I see a lowering of standards in the arts and it bothers me. I worry about the death of the imagination. It’s a gift we humans have – and have too often squandered. There is no imagination at work in that picture. What it signifies is the death of the artistic imagination. Can you imagine Dali painting that?”

“No.”

“How about Masson, Tanguy, Magritte, Delvaux, Miro, Ernst, Arp, Klee, Picasso or Pollack?”