Robert Rauschenberg was not a giant of American art; he was the giant. No American created so many aesthetic openings for so many artists.

The Met is not only the finest encyclopedic museum of art in the United States; it is arguably the finest anywhere.

The price of a work of art has nothing to do with what the work of art is, can do, or is worth on an existential, alchemical level.

The forties, seventies, and the nineties, when money was scarce, were great periods, when the art world retracted but it was also reborn.

The art gods cooked up something special for James Ensor.

Appropriation is the idea that ate the art world. Go to any Chelsea gallery or international biennial and you'll find it. It's there in paintings of photographs, photographs of advertising, sculpture with ready-made objects, videos using already-existing film.

I just want to say one thing about the '70s. Enough with this purer, "It was a better time," business. Every time is about as polluted and needy and beautiful as most other times. I was around in the '70s, and people were just as ambitious and envious and filled with need and desire as they are today.