What does one prefer? An art that struggles to change the social contract, but fails? Or one that seeks to please and amuse, and succeeds?

America is a construction of mind, not of race or inherited class or ancestral territory.

In America, nostalgia for things is apt to set in before they go.

It is the nature of carnivores to get power and then, having disposed of their enemies, to deploy the emollient powers of Great Art to make themselves look like herbivores.

The desire to be primitive was very much a function of fin-de-siècle imperialism; it appealed to strong egos and domineering minds.

Political stress is always apt to shrink the private arena and attach it on to the public

The new job of art is to sit on the wall and get more expensive.