Koons's work has always stood apart for its one-at-a-time perfection, epic theatricality, a corrupted, almost sick drive for purification, and an obsession with traditional artistic values.

Kinkade estimated that one of his paintings hung in every twenty homes in America. Yet the art world unanimously ignores or reviles him. Me included.

Those who love him love that he sells the most art; they take it as a point of faith that this proves Kinkade is the best. But his fans don't only rely on this supply-and-demand justification. They go back to values.

I've always said that an art critic can put aside politics around art.

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

Kinkade's paintings are worthless schmaltz, and the lamestream media that love him are wrong. However, I'd love to see a museum mount a small show of Kinkade's work. I would like the art world and the wider world to argue about him in public, out in the open.

New York being what it is, our museums are vertical, not horizontal. That means the stumbling blocks to architectural clarity are unavoidable - but certainly surmountable.