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Why not place a bet on Tala Madani, whose desultory drawing and wildly rebarbative conceits might have the impact at the Met that artists like Matisse once had in Paris?

Setting aside Mr Abbott’s notoriously rebarbative character, the appointment would be consistent with the myth, common among Brexit supporters, that trade deals are conjured into being by swaggering personalities.

“Many of the apparently rebarbative aspects of Sontag’s personality are clarified in light of the alcoholic family system,” he writes.

“Indeed, many of the apparently rebarbative aspects of Sontag’s personality are clarified in light of the alcoholic family system, as it was later understood,” Moser writes, and he goes on:

The work itself, the scholars are aware, is innately rebarbative.