It was a good lecture at NADFAS yesterday - best yet. The title was slightly misleading, ‘Who says? Can we trust the experts on good and bad in art.’ J and I had a lively discussion in the car on the way to this about good and bad art and we interpreted the meaning. J’s opinion is that ‘good’ art refines people’s way of looking at their world. I hope I’m paraphrasing correctly. Both of us agreed it’s subjective but that there is ‘dead’ soulless art around that does nothing for anyone, even if it isn’t actually ‘bad’. It just doesn’t have the vital spark. The lecture when it got going proved to be mostly about the authentication of art and of the several famous works that can never quite be given the stamp by experts, for instance ‘The Skating Minister’ thought to be by Henry Raeburn until 2005 when a curator of the Scottish National Gallery suggested it was by Henri-Pierre Danloux. Now the label in the gallery acknowledges this claim. Van Gogh is, we heard, one of the hardest artist to verify because of the way his paintings were stored during his life-time and distributed after his death. There was a funny story about Maggie Thatcher who at a low in Scottish Tory Party fortunes deceided to go along to their annual gathering at the Burrell collection to cheer them up. Her visit had t be kept secret from everyone because of the Irish threat so noen of the invited knew of it and as they were indeed demoralised they didn’t turn up - no-one did. Maggie was incandescent and not much soothed by a guided tour around the collection. She declared the stained glass to be pretty but ‘you get more colour for your money in ceramics. I myself am a collector of ceramics.’ She went on to mention the recent furore over a work that had come up for auction ‘by that man who paints chrysanthemums.’ When it was tactfully suggested she might mean Van Gogh’s Sunflowers there was a long silence. Suddenly she said: “Van Gogh! That's the

man. He paints VERY poor chrysanthemums.’