ABOVE: Detail from William Blake’s Nebuchadnezzar (1795), called one of the ten worst paintings in Britain by a panel of experts for the Guardian.

So last week while the BBC was gathering stones together (turn, turn turn), the Guardian was casting them away, (turn, turn, turn) assembling a crack team of misanthropic art wonks to choose the worst paintings in Britain. The whole thing quite succinctly demolishes the entirely vapid and arbitrary contest that the BBC is running with the National Gallery to choose the Greatest Painting in Britain.

The assembled team don’t pull their punches, either, as we felt was best demonstrated by by Sir Timothy Clifford, director general of the National Galleries of Scotland at Edinburgh: “We have been bequested eight paintings by Monticelli, each one more hideous than the last,” he is quoted as saying. “In my 21 years here, none has been hung because I think Monticelli produces screamingly awful art.” And another demolition expert, on The Blind Girl: “This is mawkish Victorian sentimentality at its worst. The butterflies are especially nauseating.” Ah, culture.

LINK: The Guardian > Ten of the Worst