The German ueber-photographer Andreas Gursky was the perfect pre-9/11 artist.

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.

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.

Abstract Expressionism - the first American movement to have a worldwide influence - was remarkably short-lived: It heated up after World War II and was all but done for by 1960 (although visit any art school today and you'll find a would-be Willem de Kooning).

Art is a self-replicating force.

Art usually only makes the news in America when the subject is money.

Urs Fischer specializes in making jaws drop. Cutting giant holes in gallery walls, digging a crater in Gavin Brown's gallery floor in 2007, creating amazing hyperrealist wallpaper for a group show at Tony Shafrazi: It all percolates with uncanny destructiveness, operatic uncontrollability, and barbaric sculptural power.