"Brutal and declamatory, these brooding and disquieting pictures have been created from the sorting and classification by subject of nearly 4, 000 newspaper headline posters, stolen by the artists over a number of years, " wrote Michael Bracewell, a British writer and novelist, in the show's catalogue.

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As the founders of Portrait Salon, Carole Evans and James O Jenkins write in the newspaper-style catalogue that accompanies the show, the idea began as an experiment and was not intended to upset or disrupt the Taylor Wessing, but to allow those whose work did not make the walls of the NPG another outlet.

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The 77 entries in the catalogue for a big Titian show in 1990, for example, were written by 36 different authors, guaranteeing that no coherent view would emerge.

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