Nothing They Design Ever Gets In The

It Was A Secular Cathedral, Dedicated To The Rites Of Travel.

A Gustave Courbet Portrait Of A Trout Has More Death In It Than Rubens Could Get In A Whole Crucifixion.

An Ideal Museum Show Would Be A Mating Of Brideshead Revisited With House & Garden, Provoking Intense And Pleasurable Nostalgia For A Past That None Of Its Audience Has Had.

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.

We Have Entered A Period Of Intolerance Which Combines, As It Sometimes Does In America, With A Sugary Taste For Euphemism. This Conjunction Fosters Events That Go Beyond The Wildest Dream Of Satire- If Satire Existed In America Anymore; Perhaps The Reason For Its Weakness Is That Reality Has Superseded It.