In Art There Is No Progress, Only

Far From Affording Artists Continuous Inspiration, Mass-media Sources For Art Have Become A Dead End. They Have Combined With The Abstractness Of Institutional Art Teaching To Produce A Fine-arts Culture Given Over To Information And Not Experience. This Faithfully Echoes The Drain Of Concreteness From Modern Existence- The Reign Of Mere Unassimilated Data Instead Of Events That Gain Meaning By Being Absorbed Into The Fabric Of Imaginative Life.

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.

Transportation Made Sublimation Literal. It Conveyed Evil To Another World.

Political Stress Is Always Apt To Shrink The Private Arena And Attach It On To The Public

It Is The Nature Of Carnivores To Get Power And Then, Having Disposed Of Their Enemies, To Deploy The Emollient Powers Of Great Art To Make Themselves Look Like Herbivores.