Since leaving the Art & Language group in 1975, Terry Atkinson has devoted himself to becoming a contemporary version of a 19th-century history painter—in his case, a painter of the history of the working classes. By the early ’80s he was relying on increasingly complex methods. His “Postcards from Trotsky,” 1982, involved impossible scenarios, combining material from a variety of periods and employing titles so long they seemed to subvert the images themselves. The "postcards,” which had maps to explain them, were executed in what Atkinson called a “botched” style—his own visual equivalent of