What Strip Mining Is To Nature The

What Has Our Culture Lost In 1980 That The Avant-garde Had In 1890? Ebullience, Idealism, Confidence, The Belief That There Was Plenty Of Territory To Explore, And Above All The Sense That Art, In The Most Disinterested And Noble Way, Could Find The Necessary Metaphors By Which A Radically Changing Culture Could Be Explained To Its Inhabitants.

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.

What We Need More Of Is Slow Art: Art That Holds Time As A Vase Holds Water: Art That Grows Out Of Modes Of Perception And Making Whose Skill And Doggedness Make You Think And Feel; Art That Isn’t Merely Sensational, That Doesn’t Get Its Message Across In Ten Seconds, That Isn’t Falsely Iconic, That Hooks Onto Something Deep-running In Our Natures. In A Word, Art That Is The Very Opposite Of Mass Media.

If You Want To Be Successful In The Gym, In The Classroom, In College Or When You Get Out And Go Into The World Of Work, That Is Going To Be Determined By How Hard You Are Willing To Work.

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.