A Scottish master of caricature

If, in Victorian Britain, you did not fall in with the oppressive religiosity that prevailed, you were in danger of becoming a pariah, like Charles Bradlaugh in politics and T. H. Huxley in science.

If, in 20th-century Britain, you did not subscribe to abstract expressionism, Dada urinals, Pop Art, Op Art, minimalism, ‘installations’ and every subsequent development (I am tempted to say imposture), you were likely to become a cultural pariah. The arts establishment was very like the Victorian religious establishment. It too had — and has — its high priests, with Sir Nicholas Serota of the Tate as its Pope or Archbishop of Canterbury; its anathemas and excommunications. It too had its mystique, its articles to be taken on faith: for example, the notion that when you stood in front of a Rothko of a dark red smudge on top of a paler smudge, or indeed a totally black Rothko, you were being granted some sublime, transcendental experience.