I’m in the middle of a degree in fine arts. I took on a lot of art theory thinking that theory would be the thing that would really interest me. But it turns out that many of those who have written about art are kind of mad. There are impenetrable sentences. I will not tax you, or myself, by trying to quote them now. But take my word for it. Having been trained as a copywriter in advertising quite a while ago when the craft was still alive and well, anything that lost the reader had to go. In art theory, it’s as if the opposite applies. The more impenetrable your text, the cleverer you must be. And the more opinionated and opaque your writing, the more likely you are to be elevated to the status of genius.

Thank goodness some sensible women writers came along last century after several centuries of men with far too much time on their hands. Rosalind Krauss, Susan Sontag and Linda Nochlin, to name just three. However, now that semester break is here, my bedside table is groaning with a build-up of books that are not art theory.