One thing is sure: the Sagrada Familia is the first Catholic temple whose bacon was ever saved by Shinto tourism. Not even Gaudi, who believed in miracles, could have forseen that.

In the Somme valley, the back of language broke. It could no longer carry its former meanings. World War I changed the life of words and images in art, radically and forever. It brought our culture into the age of mass-produced, industrialized death. This, at first, was indescribable.

But the existence of a cult does not mean that images appropriate to it automatically follow.

Essentially, perspective is a form of abstraction. It simplifies the relationship between eye, brain and object. It is an ideal view, imagined as being seen by a one-eyed, motionless person who is clearly detached from what he sees. It makes a God of the spectator, who becomes the person on whom the whole world converges, the Unmoved Onlooker.

It was the basilica of gossip, the Vatican of inside dope.

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt; perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.

We've got a recipe for disaster. It's huge -- this combination of body image issues and the drug's weight loss appeal.