Modernism is the protein of our cultural imagination.

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

What has our culture lost in 1980 that the avant-garde had in 1890? Ebullience, idealism, confidence, the belief that there was plenty of territory to explore, and above all the sense that art, in the most disinterested and noble way, could find the necessary metaphors by which a radically changing culture could be explained to its inhabitants.

One gets tired of the role critics are supposed to have in this culture: It's like being the piano player in a whorehouse; you don't have any control over the action going on upstairs.

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

Landscape is to American painting what sex and psychoanalysis are to the American novel.

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