To his detractors he is the perfect artist for the present profit-addled art industry.
All of which means he's the perfect artist to be the focus of Gateways.
Maria Lassnig is "the perfect artist for the age of the selfie," says Peter Eleey, who has curated a survey of the Austrian painter's self-portraits.
Virginia Woolf installed her at the head of the canon of English women novelists ("the most perfect artist among women, the writer whose books are immortal").
On a wall nearby hangs a portrait of Carson by Norman Rockwell, the perfect artist for this model product of Middle American upbringing.
George Henry Lewes, the Victorian critic and partner of George Eliot, declared Austen to be "the greatest artist that has ever written," and Virginia Woolf called her "the most perfect artist among women, the writer whose books are immortal".
It is no surprise that Dean Moss, dance and performance curator of the Kitchen, found Ms. Childs to be the perfect artist to represent the Chelsea theater's 30th anniversary season.
She had, though, lived long enough to be hailed as "the perfect artist for the age of the selfie", although it's an accolade that, at least initially, hardly seems to make sense.
Bathed in natural light, Orchard Flower Farm studio is the perfect artist's retreat, with six acres of garden (01872 553 491, boutique-retreats.co.uk, from £390 for a long weekend, sleeps two).
Indeed, it is this concern with the performative elements of her autographical painting that starts to bring sense to that earlier claim about Lassnig being the perfect artist for the selfie age.
