At his Hilarious Pessimist blog, Dalrymple takes on artist Anish Kapoor for his recent statement, “In Britain, traditionally – at least since the Enlightenment – we’ve been afraid of anything intellectual, aesthetic, visual.”

Let us pass over in charitable silence this thumbnail sketch of our national mental existence since the beginning of the 18th Century. Let us instead remark on the artist’s locus standi to pronounce on such questions: for he is one of those many modern artists who would add considerably to the beauty of the world by desisting from their activities.

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