Abstraction Brings The World Into More Complex,

Sometimes Good Art Jumps Out At Me; Most Of The Time I See Bad Art, Or See Nothing At All And Just Drift, Feeling Weird, Pretending To Be Fine.

All Of Koons's Best Art - The Encased Vacuum Cleaners, The Stainless-steel Rabbit (the Late-twentieth Century's Signature Work Of Simulationist Sculpture), The Amazing Gleaming Balloon Dog, And The Cast-iron Re-creation Of A Civil War Mortar Exhibited Last Month At The Armory - Has Simultaneously Flaunted Extreme Realism, Idealism, And Fantasy.

'the Night Cafe' And 'the Starry Night' Still Emit Such Pathos, Density, And Intensity That They Send Shivers Down The Spine. Whether Van Gogh Thought In Color Or Felt With His Intellect, The Radical Color, Dynamic Distortion, Heart, Soul, And Part-by-part Structure In These Paintings Make Him A Bridge To A New Vision And The Vision Itself.

As I Made My Way Through 'on Line,' The Austere, Stridently Dogmatic, Sometimes Revelatory Exhibition 'about Line' At Moma, I Found Myself Thinking, 'someone Please Wake Me When The Seventies Are Over!' In The Empire Of Curators, The Sun Never Sets On The Seventies. It Is The Undead Decade.

I See Around 100 Shows A Month, Going From Niketown-size Palaces Where You Feel Like Yelling, To Storefronts In Bushwick. Each Has To Pay The Bills; Keep Artists Happy; And Cope With Collectors (oy!), Curators (ay-yi-yi), Critics (woo-hoo!), And Occasionally Plumbers. That Their Fiscal Life Often Hangs In The Balance Only Adds To The Energy.