It is what it is not. Whilst puzzling over a inept painting in a East End London gallery a young friend pointed out that, what was significant, was what the painting was trying not to be, trying not to do. That is, what the artist was avoiding, what it wasn’t. My problem was that I could not see whether this painting was intentionally bad, a pastiche, bricolage, ironically mischievous, wittily childish, a joke, knowingly gauche, or that it was simply […]