The Metropolitan Museum of Art is unsurpassed at presenting more than 50 centuries of work. I go there constantly, seeing things over and over, better than I've ever seen them before.

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

All of Koons's best art - the encased vacuum cleaners, the stainless-steel Rabbit (the late-twentieth century's signature work of Simulationist sculpture), the amazing gleaming Balloon Dog, and the cast-iron re-creation of a Civil War mortar exhibited last month at the Armory - has simultaneously flaunted extreme realism, idealism, and fantasy.

I have a soft spot for art that, in terms of subject matter and material, is in bad taste.

When art wins, everyone wins.

Put yourself in the position of an up-and-coming artist living in early-sixteenth-century Italy. Now imagine trying to distinguish yourself from the other artists living in your town: Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo, or Titian. Is it any wonder that the Italian High Renaissance lasted only 30 years?

I think that writing is a process that tells you what you think. You sometimes actually don't know what your opinion is until you hear yourself trying to piece it out and have it make sense to you. The process itself is so bizarre and mysterious that you never know what it's going to tell you.