Bricks commissioned for the cover shoot of 'Shock Of The New' and as a sly dig at 'Equivalent VIII' -the pretentious name for a pile of bricks by Carl Andre which the Tate originally paid £6,000 for in 1972. Andre’s experiments with ‘creating sculpture without cutting into the material’ in fact dates back to 1969, but there was so little interest in the works that nobody bought it. As far as the bricks were concerned he returned them back to the Long Island brickworks and got his money back.

But when the Tate coughed up the tax-payers cash, Andre found that the brick company had since closed and so had to buy some completely differently bricks (proving that it was not the bricks themselves that constitutes the work of art, but the idea), which were duly delivered to the Tate, along with precise instructions for assembly. It was not for another four years, in 1976 when their display and purchase caused such furore.

My personal memory of this was of a picture in the tabloids of a school class being shown it in the gallery with a teacher pointing at the work and obviously explaining it. Some of the kids were suppressing laughing or laughing behind their hands, proving a) that they understood it and he didn't, b) if you have to explain it, it doesn't work, and c) you don't have to be an artist to judge a painting!