I know you to be clever, cultured, superior and smug. So name the first 10 artists that spring to mind, GO!

Lose a point each for: Rembrandt, Renoir, Hockney, Picasso and Van Gough. Lose three points for every other one named that isn’t a female.

Ok, that’s actually impossible without getting really obscure. I don’t count Tracey Emmin. Cos I don’t like her. A messy bedroom covered in fag-ash is not ‘art’. Its my life from 18 to 30 (when I married my first wife). And you’ll be struggling with females because…

They’re no good at art. Useless at paintin’. Obviously. Otherwise the world’s galleries would be filled with their prodigious output. And they’re not. Because either women didn’t do art, can’t do art due to hormonal/ovarian issues, or they weren’t allowed to ‘play’ in the totally male-dominated patriarchy that was the entire civilised world up to 1972. If women did paint they had to adopt a man’s name to sell their art. And few did. Few were taken seriously enough to warrant it.

Thus the entire ‘world history’ as viewed through our massive collection of artistic works, is a one hundred percent male-orientated view.

And that’s where Paula Rego comes in. That’s why I went to the Tate yesterday (missing all the fun of Spurs at Arsenal! What a loss that was…) To see the works of real-life, still alive in fact, woman artist who not only represents the women’s viewpoint, but does everything but actually castrating the works of establishment male artists.

I’m good at seeing the meanings hidden in paintings. Getting straight through to the subconscious mindset of the artist. Thus Lila’s first ‘work’, some purple scribbles on white paper, went straight onto our fridge door bearing the title: free expression by the artist in pre-self-conscious mode. I could feel her angst.

Similarly with Paula Rego’s quite brilliant paintings, I totally got that when she painted a cartoon dog on a little girl’s lap with a pitchfork in the foreground, that she was really bemoaning the horrendous abuse of women under the awful fascist dictatorship ruling Portugal for about 40 years, causing total female repression. I got that instantly. Honest. The little board saying those very words just made me realise how fantastically perceptive I am. “Yeah, I knew that”, I spoke to those around me, just in case they thought I didn’t have a fucking clue what anything was without reading the explanations. As if.

It really is a fantastic exhibition and worth a visit (ya have to book). And not just a great way to avoid the horrible unpleasantness of certain football fixtures.

Happy Monday

A xxxx