And paint that pebbledash / And sell it to a load of pretentious prats.

What is with folkies & 'modern' art? I heard a poet giving a similar hatched job to Tracey Emin's 'masturbation drawings' during the Fylde Festival a couple of months back - but at least got me to look 'em up on line and they really are quite amazing. So - a strange sort of heads up, but a grim testimony to the underlying conservatism that reveals Folk's self-righteous ignorance in all its reactionary glory. Depressing!

I'm with Grayson Perry on Lowry : In the 1950s and 60s, The Guardian newspaper used to feature Lowry's art all the time. He represented working-class views. The exhibition Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life at Tate Britain didn't do him any favours. When you see all his work together you realise how repetitive it is. The subject matter is working class and everything has a nice back story to it but then you look at the work, and the style of it is quite twee, quite children's bookish. It grates on you after the 58th viewing."

The only really good stuff he did was his surreal 'self portraits' which featured a series of stark obelisks which show him thinking outside of his usual box in a quest for something more worthy of his craft than mawkish visions of ghastly fecking matchstalk men. Read about 'em here:

Lowry Paintings Saved For The Nation By Sunderland Museum