I had hoped to go to more of the conference about John Golding at the Courtauld Institute than just seeing the film, A Path to the Absolute, that Bruno Wollheim has made, but not finished, about him.  I knew John Golding only slightly, admiring him and his writings from afar, meeting him only occasionally with Bruno where dinner would be dominated by Richard Wollheim, leaving John as a drily amusing and slightly saturnine memory.   Through the film I learned more:  his upbringing in Mexico;  returning to London in 1951 to go to the Courtauld Institute;  nothing about being taught by Anthony Blunt, an odd gap as Blunt must have supervised Golding’s PhD. on Cubism;  his friendship with Douglas Cooper;  his hands shaking before lecturing;  then turning to pure painting and teaching at the RCA.   There was much about Golding being known primarily as an art historian and his relative neglect as a painter.   But he was great as an art historian, bringing qualities of intellectual precision to the study of twentieth-century art, and important for his influence on a generation of students including T.J. Clark, whereas no-one is suggesting he had quite the same importance as an artist.