It Was The Basilica Of Gossip, The

Works Of Art... Do Not Force Meanings On Their Audience; Meaning Emerges, Adds Up, Unfolds From Their Imagined Centres... Takes One Through The Process Of Discovering Meaning.

Perhaps The Rhinos And She-crocodiles Whose Gyrations Between Mortimer's And East Hampton Gives Us Our Vision Of Social Eminence Today Are Content To Entrust Their Faces To Andy Warhol's Mingily Cosmetic Polaroidising, But One Would Bet They Would Rather Go To Sargent.

It Was Van Gogh's Madness That Prevented Him From Working; The Paintings Themselves Are Ineffably Sane, If Sanity Is To Be Defined In Terms Of Exact Judgment Of Ends And Means And The Power Of Visual Analysis.

What Does One Prefer? An Art That Struggles To Change The Social Contract, But Fails? Or One That Seeks To Please And Amuse, And Succeeds?

It Is Hard To Think Of Any Work Of Art Of Which One Can Say 'this Saved The Life Of One Jew, One Vietnamese, One Cambodian'. Specific Books, Perhaps; But As Far As One Can Tell, No Paintings Or Sculptures. The Difference Between Us And The Artists Of The 1920's Is That They They Thought Such A Work Of Art Could Be Made. Perhaps It Was A Certain Naivete That Made Them Think So. But It Is Certainly Our Loss That We Cannot.