When art wins, everyone wins.

Works of art often last forever, or nearly so. But exhibitions themselves, especially gallery exhibitions, are like flowers; they bloom and then they die, then exist only as memories, or pressed in magazines and books.

Rumors sound of galleries asking artists for upsized art and more of it. I've heard of photographers asked to print larger to increase the wall power and salability of their work. Everything winds up set to maximum in order to feed the beast.

Abstraction is one of the greatest visionary tools ever invented by human beings to imagine, decipher, and depict the world.

All great contemporary artists, schooled or not, are essentially self-taught and are de-skilling like crazy. I don't look for skill in art... skill has nothing to do with technical proficiency... I'm interested in people who rethink skill, who redefine or reimagine it: an engineer, say, who builds rockets from rocks.

Mission accomplished. The Museum of Modern Art's wide-open, tall-ceilinged, super-reinforced second floor was for all intents and purposes built to accommodate monumental installations and gigantic sculptures, should the need arise. It has arisen.

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.