A word is a thought, of course. But any image, including a photograph, may become an instrument of sufficiently lucid cogitation.

Beauty is a physiological reaction. Beauty is not an object.

There's art that I would readily buy if I could afford it, and enjoy, but would never write about because it doesn't seem significant.

The experience of beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say. The artist's relation to the object of beauty, how the art makes that happen, is a whole other subject. Beauty is an event. Beauty is something that happens. There is no such thing as a beautiful object or a beautiful woman.

The dominant problem of pictorial art since the nineteen-fifties is photography, and, by extension, film and video. The basilisk eye of the camera has withered the pride of handworked mediums. Painting survives on a case-by-case basis, its successes amounting to special exemptions from a verdict of history.

There's a double standard between writers and readers. Readers can be unfaithful to writers anytime they like, but writers must never ever be unfaithful to the readers.

The problem of making artists talk about their work is that when they're making their work the left-brain is shut off. So if you talk to an artist about it, you're talking to someone who wasn't there. It's hopeless.