You Can't Prove Rembrandt Is Better Than

Art Schools Are Partly The Villain Here. (never Mind That I Teach In Them.) This Generation Of Artists Is The First To Have Been So Widely Credentialed, And Its Young Members So Fetishize The Work Beloved By Their Teachers That Their Work Ceases To Talk About Anything Else. Instead Of Enlarging Our View Of Being Human, It Contains Safe Rehashing Of Received Ideas About Received Ideas. This Is A Melancholy Romance With Artistic Ruins, Homesickness For A Bygone Era. This Yearning May Be Earnest, But It Stunts Their Work, And By Turn The Broader Culture.

Art Is Good, Bad, Boring, Ugly, Useful To Us Or Not.

I Don't Know Much About Auctions. I Sometimes Go To Previews And See Art Sardined Into Ugly Rooms. I've Gawked At The Gaudy Prices, And Gaped At Well-clad Crowds Of Happy White People Conspicuously Spending Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars.

Ofili Is Still A Champion. It Would Be A Huge Mistake To Think Otherwise.

I Don't Want To Hear At All What The Artist Thinks About His Art. And I'm Not Writing For The Artist. I'm Writing For The Reader, And I Want To Tell The Reader What I Think.