Confidence Is The Prize Given

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.

We Have Entered A Period Of Intolerance Which Combines, As It Sometimes Does In America, With A Sugary Taste For Euphemism. This Conjunction Fosters Events That Go Beyond The Wildest Dream Of Satire- If Satire Existed In America Anymore; Perhaps The Reason For Its Weakness Is That Reality Has Superseded It.

Perhaps The Rhinos And She-crocodiles Whose Gyrations Between Mortimer's And East Hampton Gives Us Our Vision Of Social Eminence Today Are Content To Entrust Their Faces To Andy Warhol's Mingily Cosmetic Polaroidising, But One Would Bet They Would Rather Go To Sargent.

It Is Hard To Think Of Any Work Of Art Of Which One Can Say 'this Saved The Life Of One Jew, One Vietnamese, One Cambodian'. Specific Books, Perhaps; But As Far As One Can Tell, No Paintings Or Sculptures. The Difference Between Us And The Artists Of The 1920's Is That They They Thought Such A Work Of Art Could Be Made. Perhaps It Was A Certain Naivete That Made Them Think So. But It Is Certainly Our Loss That We Cannot.

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.