Status Updates From Perfect Wave: More Essays o...

“The process of civilization becoming less centralized and less authoritarian has created modes of expression in which the burden of assigning meaning and value resides wholly within the colloquy of beholders… So, today, we all acknowledge that, when we argue about art, we are arguing about the use, value, and meaning of objects that have no power, value, or meaning beyond those we attribute to them.”

“The world of art and letters, of graffiti and sexy music, is where we hone these skills, where we acquire the responsiveness, imagination, and flexibility to deal with this world, where we learn to appreciate its anxieties.

“I understood art to be a necessary accoutrement of urban life, a democratic social field of sublimated anxiety, adventure... I assumed that free citizens cultivated their responsiveness to works of art in order to mitigate their narcissism and fuel their imaginative grasp of that which is irrevocably beyond themselves, to transform their anxious discomfort at not knowing into a kind of vertiginous pleasure.”