his appearances on television. He was known for his formal, old-fashioned RP diction and for his anti-populist sentiments. He offended people in Gateshead by claiming an exhibition was too important to be held at the town's Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and should instead be shown to "more sophisticated" audiences in London. He also disparaged Liverpool as a cultural city. Controversy In 1994 thirty-five figures from the art world signed a letter to the Evening Standard attacking Sewell for "homophobia", "misogyny", "demagogy", "hypocrisy", "artistic prejudice", "formulaic insults" and "predictable scurrility". Signatories included Karsten Schubert, Maureen Paley, Michael Craig-Martin, Christopher Frayling, John Hoyland, Sarah Kent, Nicholas Logsdail, George Melly, Sandy Nairne, Eduardo Paolozzi, Bridget Riley, Richard Shone, Marina Warner, Natalie Wheen and Rachel Whiteread. Sewell responded with comments about many of the signatories, describing Paley as being "the curatrix of innumerable silly little Arts Council exhibitions" and describing Whiteread as being "mortified by my dismissal of her work for the Turner Prize". A letter supporting Sewell from twenty other art-world signatories accused the writers of attempted censorship to promote "a relentless programme of neo-conceptual art in all the main London venues". Sewell suggested that art world insiders had felt embarrassed by a recent TV stunt in which he, a dealer and another critic had been shown a painting without being told that it had been painted by an elephant. Sewell described the painting as having no merit, while the other participants praised it. Sewell's attitude toward female artists was controversial. In July 2008, he was quoted in The Independent as saying: Despite being attacked in his 2013 memoirs, Veronica Wadley, the editor of the Standard between 2002 and 2009, defended Sewell and said she had defended him from management and arts' lobbyists who wanted him sacked. Sewell was strongly opinionated and was known to insult the general public for their views on art. With regard to public praise for the work of Banksy in Bristol, he was quoted as saying: He went on to assert that Banksy himself "should have been put down at birth." Media personality Clive Anderson described him as "a man intent on keeping his Christmas card list nice and short." In an Evening Standard review, Sewell summed up his view of the David Hockney: A Bigger Picture exhibition at the Royal Academy, as concluding that Hockney had made a mistake focusing on painting in his later career: