The New Job Of Art Is To

Nevertheless, What Was Made In The Hope Of Transforming The World Need Not Be Rejected Because It Failed To Do So – Otherwise, One Would Also Have To Throw Out A Good Deal Of The Greatest Painting And Poetry Of The Nineteenth Century. An Objective Political Failure Can Still Work As A Model Of Intellectual Affirmation Or Dissent.

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.

We Have Entered A Period Of Intolerance Which Combines, As It Sometimes Does In America, With A Sugary Taste For Euphemism.

We Want To Create A Sort Of Linguistic Lourdes, Where Evil And Misfortune Are Dispelled By A Dip In The Waters Of Euphemism

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.