Whilst my Golden Age books were filled with beautiful pictures of three funnelled liners and twin engined monoplanes or the sumptuous work of Rackham, Detmold, Dulac and others, these were not really the Art of the period. The real developments of that time were very different.

One can find these early twentieth century painting styles and schools rather incomprehensible, and reading catalogue guides to exhibitions is not always so much help. One would like to know in advance what kind of paintings one is going to see. I have therefore created a classification system based upon a sort of immediate response - the kind of response one might have if a painter or painting had no particular external accreditation - no link to favourable reviews, no past record of recognition. What you might think if you saw the painting in a skip at your local rubbish tip, and contemplated it for a minute or two.

Some paintings we instinctively feel could have been done by a child of a particular age. Some painters - including no less a one than Picasso - explain that they have striven to paint like a child. Other paintings give an impression that a monkey could have done them. A certain careless disposition of paint, in what seem to be random colours, with little attention to detail, and no discernible structure could be seen as the result of a happy ten minutes on the part of an ape - a chimpanzee perhaps. Such paintings may actually be the result of a very well defined philosophy, and careful thought and application, but do not give this impression to most people. Another type of painting whilst suggesting the reasonless activity of an animal, has a certain repetitive quality which suggests not so much a primate, as a bird engaging in that jerky action which is their characteristic movement. A chicken springs to mind with its constant pecking and strutting. I use parrot painting in preference, because there has been at least one parrot which learned to paint, and produced some effective looking work. Other paintings seem as if a very simple computer program could have generated the result.

Most of these classifications are unsustainable on careful examination. Whatever the artistic merit of these types of painting one can soon dismiss the possibility that they originated as suggested by the new classification. Adult humans - whatever they intend - don't often behave exactly like children, animals, or like machines either for that matter. As I have studied the paintings discussed I have come to reject the old saying idea whilst a barbarian can never behave, like a civilised man a civilised man can behave like a barbarian. Picasso might have striven to paint like a child, but he probably didn't - he painted like Picasso.

Let's look in more detail at some of these categories - descending by stages from the classroom to nothing, via toddlers, chimpanzees, parrots, computers - in decreasing order of intelligence till we seem to end up in a world where nothing is everything! We start in a place we can all remember - with pleasure, or pain as may be..