Ever searching for persiflage and tomfoolery in the way of artspeak and imagery, I comb the shelves now and then (they're too-reliably stocked with the same tired stuff) and occasionally find a gem-in-the-rough that needs our fullest attention. I have found one in American Art Collector (#8). It features such imperishable interpreters of the American scene as Bruce Handford, watercolorist; Glenna Goodacre, living successor to the collectivist sculptors of old Rogers'
Groups; Christel Minotti, heiress apparent to Matisse (and quite a money-maker to judge from her very own "Price Range Indicator", which is posted with every artistic profile.) There is somebody called David Knowlton, whose large works now fetch $3,100 (down from $3,000 in 2000. This is apparently leap enough to warrant recognition.) Kent Wallis does assembly-line paintings that belong in the finest cheap hotels, though the magazine singles such work out as epitomizing "truth (and) beauty." It also has a "spiritual quality." Michael Flohr is an artist that has to be seen with sunglasses lest the potential art-lover suffer from an acute strobe effect. He is, however, showing in a San Diego Gallery, which is possibly well aware of this problem and may have a whole box of Ray-Bans available. It doesn't say this outright. What the gallery does say is this: "Michael Flohr's works capture the nostalgia of American life.
Collectors from all walks and all ages can relate to the humanity that Flohr captures on the canvas. The urban street scenes and lively bar scenes could be from any time period in history. Michael Flohr is our top artist in the gallery. He is a talented artist and a wonderful person."

A man named James Thorne, of "Exclusive Collections Gallery", wrote this; he obviously suffers from the strobe effect himself. He also writes as if he's just learning the language. I won't even go into how unfamiliar history must be to this man. If Flohr's tacky restaurants and obviously Second Millenium nightlife seem timeless to him, he's really got to start cracking the books again. This kind of perspective just will not wash.

I must admit to being somewhat gleeful. I think I have found the Worst Art Magazine. There are, however, some moderating influences. A man named Stephen Magsic does occasionally excellent paintings of the kinds of subjects Robert Cottingham and Richard Estes made acceptable back in The Day. But he does them with greater feeling; I would even say panache - though the word denigrates him somewhat. The Bernaducci.Meisel Gallery has mounted what appears to be an excellent group exhibit - though I can't believe a word the reviewer has said about it. Why is it that so many of the writers sound as if they're more comfortable in another tongue? (Few of these writers are credited, showing that the magazine at least has some sense of this defect.) Listen to this anonymous scribe as he or she rhapsodizes about a painting called "Sole Morning" which "demonstrates a more subdued feeling of summer, with a serene seascape that exemplifies his (artist David Dewey's) superb treatment of tonality and color." This is a thesarus speaking and not a real person with some rudimentary grasp of what one's native tongue can and cannot do.
The eponymous Frank Bernaducci, however, has the best quote. When speaking of his brainchild, he says it "presents not only a seasonal review but attempts to explore a wide range of visceral emotions. . ." I should say emotions are visceral. I'd hate to have any other kind myself.

Another excellent artist, in the mold of Huey Lee-Smith, also comes to light in the magazine; it was worth the price just to know of this man. His name is Aron Wiesenfeld and he has a handle on what it means to be alone and perhaps afraid in a land not of one's own making. There is also a bit of Tooker in his sallow-faced isolates, his dour perspectives, his uncompromising honesty. How he got in a place like this baffles me, but I'm used to seeing this sort of dichotomy in the art world, where the bad and the ugly occasionally cross swords with the conscientiously well-made and authentically heartfelt.

I just expressed wonderment at Wiesenfield's presence:
his gallery has taken out a full-page ad. Gotta get a little something for that!

I must, however, pause to explore one man's gaudy, but apparently impregnable, self-regard. He is John O'Hern and is Curator of the Arnot Art Museum. In his article, Secret Visions, he brings to light a few good artists who are characteristically out of place in American Art Collector. First he tells us about George Inness. Seems to me that any serious art collector ought to know about old George. But I'm just quibbling here. Let's let him tell us that Inness painted in the style of the "French Barbizon School" which was "noted for. . .painting in a darker palette with lose brushstrokes." I think he meant "loose brushstrokes", but he's a museum director and I'm just a high school graduate, so what do I know?
He also points out that Inness' paintings "suggest a spiritual basis to Nature." I love it when people capitalize words like Nature and Prosperity and such.
It just makes me all tingly inside.

The painters O'Hern chose are all pretty interesting:
Daniel Morper, Ann Lofquist, Alan Bray and Ben Aronson. Skipping around, here's what he says of Daniel Morper's interest in something Hopper and Burchfield introduced almost a century ago and doesn't really need exculpating. "Rail yards and rail cars (that foreign English again!) are seldom seen as objects of beauty. Even when they occur in the majestic beauty (there is it again!) of the high desert of the Southwest, they are overlooked or regarded as eyesores." I don't think people working in the yards overlook them. And a lot of train buffs in that locality no doubt find them quite fetching.
Who the hell, then, is he talking about? Us? All sorts of man-made things have appeared in paintings for a long time. Railroad stuff is old hat. Mr.
O'Hern doesn't need to draw attention to a lack of suitability that isn't really applicable. He goes on to say that Morper's skies "rival the real thing."
Well, whoop-de-doo! Morper's a realist painter; that's his job. Do all the rest of the artists in the article - or in art generally - fail with their skies?
He goes on to say that Morper "chooses times of day and conditions the layman would most likely just pass through." This phrase evokes the hobo. I think he means "pass over." That foreign influence again.
Perhaps Mr. O'Hern grew up speaking Gaelic?

This is really too rich. I've spent the last half hour scouring the magazine for other tid-bits of the sort I've already supplied, but let them suffice. I think Joseph Jefferson said you shouldn't enjoy yourself too much, and I must admit that I got somewhat carried away, so I'll let whatever I've already said stand. But, oh, there's so much more! I just can't wait to dive in for another peek. I really think I've found the very worst art magazine in
creation.

After I entered the marketplace - albeit in sideways fashion - I began to observe its mechanics - a cautionary tale for anybody who doesn't do his research. I think the classic ironic character is somebody who doesn't grasp the disconnect between practice and principle; one's ideals and the means by which he, the lapsed idealist, operates in the world. In this regard, I could have been Candide himself:  open, trusting - and therefore delusional.

I have concluded that art politics play a much greater role than the naif can possibly understand. That purchases - as well as the vetting - or art and artists take place in that region of the unconcious that also wants to drive the most expensive car, pose with the president, and drop the unwieldy names of the rich and famous. There is a paradox here in that both the worthy and unworthy cluster together. That is to say, just because a man happens to be educated in the right place and performs according to expectations doesn't mean he has nothing to say. Conversely, a woman who toils away in obscurity does not necessarily deserve attention because of it - whether she gets it or not. But some do just that and are overlooked. However, those who live by the rules are passed over rarely.

This is to say, that fortune is a thing most easily grasped by the fortunate. We love come-from-beyond stories because they're precisely that. They need to be told because they rarely happen in "real life." I must admit that I was personally sustained, for many years, by the selfsame myth: of some wise old person who, in scorning the usual niceties, shoulders conventional wisdom aside and elevates me to the eminence I deserve. A kindly old fellow with impeccable manners, but a stern and watchful rectitude: a man onto the flaws of the system and the hero-worship that attends success. A man swinging a lantern in search for another man like himself: an honest fellow doing his work as best he can, no matter what the price to himself or his loved ones.

I cringe to admit to such personal grandiosity, but it is true. I had to believe in this miraculous happenstance in the same way that cancer victims have to believe in the scientific researcher who will ultimately save them.

Needless to say, no such person has appeared. I have also, alas, ceased to believe in him (or her.) Though I still watch old Hollywood movies and think it would be a damned nice thing if such a person could exist outside of set or studio.

I began by thinking that the marketplace - for art, in my case - was based upon finding the best possible item and putting it up for sale. A very naive supposition. When a student is given a text, the student takes it all in, without wondering what was left out. I took in art history under the assumption that what was written was all there was. An artist learns his trade, he takes it to the marketplace, where the moneyed and discriminating congregate, and the artist finds an audience that will grow and grow. This happens, of course, but therein lies the fallacy of all convention-bound histories: they deal only with the successes - or very spectacular failures. In art history, the gods are on the side of the strivers who make it. There are no others. The myth of the underappreciated artist is, of course, a stock-in-trade of our cultural mythos, but, in order to qualify, he or she must eventually become known and appreciated. It is a story with a beginning, a long middle, and a Hollywood ending. It doesn't address what actually happens, and is happening, in our culture on a daily basis. And will go on and on until basic truths about how taste and reputations are made begin to enter through the front door.

I've been ranting about the hegemony of certain art-forms over others in my blog lately, but I can hardly claim to be onto something new. How this happens goes to the heart of what happens both in, and outside, of our museums and galleries. How this happens underlines our present star-struck and fame-obsessed culture and offers, in my opinion, another cautionary tale.

I suppose it is impossible to eliminate prejudice - which can be defined, in this context, as an assumption about a person's status or character based upon trifling externals. These trifling externals are magnified into a rigid belief system and are perpetuated in the usual way: by constant exposure and easy ratification. "That so-and-so. He's flatfooted, isn't it?" "Oh, yes. You can see it in everything he does." "Well, I'm not going to have anyone of his type in my house." "Oh, no. You can't have anyone like that. We're godfearing, arch-supporting people!"

"Amen to that!"

And so it goes. I've found that art and artists are dealt with in a similar way. If an artist is accepted, he is acceptable. If you find him in the best homes and choicest collections, you will most likely find him in an ever-increasing spiral of such places. Again, hardly a revolutionary notion.

Success breeds success and that's all there is to that. What is pernicious about it, however, is the assumption that if a certain thing is in a certain place, it's worthwhile. It is a kind of smoke-and-mirrors system applied to high culture. If you actually frequent such places, you can hear all sorts of ridiculous conversations about who has what and how much x paid for y and, by the way, did you get down to the shore this summer? (A stupid question: of course he did!) If there is any talk about the meaning of such an object, I rarely hear it. Nor do I hear much about how it might stack up to other objects in other homes. (Homeless objects rarely come up.
What in hell are they anyway?) I have tried to strike up conversations about the nature of seeing; good art as opposed to bad; art that's available, but underappreciated in such places and have gotten the look I always get. It says: "You're an interesting fellow, but why on earth should we care about that?"

Point well taken. Such people have their quarry already. And if it is good quarry and approved of by everybody else in the circle, why on earth do we need to talk about anything else?

Again, point well taken. But there is a real problem here. Those who are privileged enough to choose their reality don't have to think about anything that might otherwise trouble them. But my mind seems to be nothing but trouble. It breeds questions about class; intrinsic value; good character and bad - and all sorts of other stuff the people who seem to be in control rarely wish to address.

Over the years, I've made inroads into this culture myself. I've had to. Poor people don't buy paintings. But I've made it only so far. The big collectors go after the Big Quarry and I'm not that.
I've had to move within the bottom tier of the big money, where I manage to scratch out a living among people who can gaze upon fifty of my choicest paintings and choose a small one - or, as things generally turn out, nothing at all. It is possible that the small one strikes this person's fancy. I tend to think that I'm not considered important enough for someone so much more important than I am to spring for something substantial. I could be wrong, but I know something about the other stuff my economy-minded collector already has. If she wanted to, she could buy all fifty of the paintings I've chosen to wave at her (and her husband) in good temper - but almost always in vain.

It is good mental conditioning to realize that the world operates in this way, but accepting it should not be an option. Subversions should be attempted at all times. When I have a show, I consider it not only an opportunity for banter, but as a platform for my ideas. Because I'm temporarily elevated to a somewhat higher status, I can use my transient powers to educate. I try to do this in an unobtrusive way, provided I drink sparingly, but what I most wish to do is shake these people and tell them, oh, what I could do with your money. The collection I could assemble with my knowledge, experience, and disregard for its social significance. There was a gambler, I'd say, named Canfield who got rich off of his Manhattan casinos. He started collecting art and, while he had to do business with the swells, his friends were the artists. Now that's real subversion. Care to try it?


Another paradox has always struck me: how timid the rich are! They have what Bogart called "fuck-you money" out the wazoo and yet they march in lock-step socially and intellecutally (f that's not an
oxymoron.) If you look at the world's major collections, they're pretty much in the copycat mold. If there is any independent thought, it's been rigorously edited and roundly discouraged. These collections are, however, about money as well. There is a gambling element to them. Bet on this horse and he'll take you to the finish line and beyond - I promise! Hearing this sort of talk, the rich collector goes to Sotheby's and gets his Picassos or his Impressionists and ignores the rest.

Is greed an exponential thing? Can it be nurtured like any other delicate organism? Or is this kind of speculation just another aspect of social cowardice?

Are these collectors already thinking - after the first flush of acquisitive pleasure - of the Big Donation, which will perpetuate their name?

I can't know. All I can do is speculate - and perhaps dream of a time when art will become a communally significant exercise and not objectified by the wealthy and opportunisitic. Now art simply provides an perfect shell-game for the socially conscious speculator - and there will always be such people as long as there are other people he or she can exploit.

But: with my last shred of idealism clutched in my hand, I wish for a time when people who want something can at least be honest about why they want it. That would represent, for me, a real stride - a milestone in human honesty, a tremendous breakthrough for all of us. For now, however, I have to content myself with the occasional sale and, of course, whatever species of ire, indignation, wonderment and hope compels me to sit around and write when I should perhaps be out promoting myself. After all, a living isn't made by itself, my friend.

Profound Gaps and Valuable Spaces (in one beloved
institution)

As I was browsing through the Barbizon and Impressionist "rooms" at the National Gallery, a number of predictably unpleasant thoughts regarding the collecting mentality began to take shape in my mind. Those who are familiar with my "take" on collectors and collecting will probabably be able to guess them accurately enough. (I must inject a qualification here and say categorically that I don't necessarily expect ANYBODY to be familiar with my thought process. I am just assumming that the curious handful may have scanned my blog and it is of this possible population that I speak.)

At any rate, as I was browsing a very persistent thought began to assert itself. "Why this?" might be an accurate expression of that thought. (Or, rather:
Why JUST this?") Any lower-case national gallery should bring together, from the various significant movements of art history, a sort of compendium of the best of these movements and trot them out for the public. What it chooses should be carefully considered. I suppose gaps are to be expected, but in our National Gallery's emphasis on the Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, it misses the boat significantly. Art history has, for some time now, cast so-called academic painters in the role of villains and villainnesses. They were the ones who fought so hard to keep the radicals out. And indeed many did. But in the Eighteen Seventies, Monet seemed to be working in daubs and swatches. Later on, Cezanne also seemed to be brewing up a sort of lunatic potion of broad directional strokes and eye-searing, board-flat colorations. Van Gogh might be seen as a real lunatic, with his borrowings from Japan - which were far more oddball than Whistler's - and his expressionistic (as opposed to illusion-centered) handling of form, color, and spatial relationships.
These people were very, very odd - though a casual study situates them all just to the left of the academic painters with whom they studied for a while, but whose more conventional techniques and (to use that scrumptious word) methodologies they ultimately spurned.

However, as I browsed, I remembered that there were a few academic paintings among the great roomfuls of now-acceptable daubs and I went to see them. Before making my pilgrimage, however, I studied Manet for a while. And Bazille. Manet was essentially a studio painter incurably smitten with Velasquez and Murillo.
He did not really understand natural light and is therefore an impressionist-by-default. Degas understood it much better and was by far the more complex talent. The National has done well by him and collected figures studies, portraits, and interiors by him. Manet shows very poorly alongside of him.

Bazille's work looks hopefully wooden and incoherent.
He simply doesn't belong in a great national collection. The wallspace is just too dear.

The academic paintings are, by and large, not much better. If there is a duller classicist than Puvis de Chavannes, I'd like to know what he or she might be.
There are way too many of his paintings - which is to say, one is almost too much. He belongs in the basement. But the Benjamin Constant and Arnold Bocklin - two very different people - are a credit to the collection. Constant does what Manet attempted to do - academic set-pieces - but beats him all to hell in capturing natural light, and is easily his superior in terms of what Manet is famous for: paint application and/or painterly texture. His offering is no less (or more) absurd than Manet's stagey painting of studio models together in a non-setting - and is called something on the lines of "The Emir's Favorite." It shows two lovely ladies posing langorously in a shadowy courtyard with the cool Mediterranean in the distance. A casual study is rewarding. You notice that the handling, while solid, is reliant on suggestion. The golden lights of veils are dragged with the brush over previous layers.
Shadows are mysteriously transparent, faces are not overdeveloped. It is a pretty damned good painting, all in all, and makes you wonder whether the academic painters, for all their infamous conservatism, weren't justifiably exercised when they first set eyes on the Impressionists and their dissentious colleagues. They actually knew how to do what they Impressionists were trying to do, but were, alas, chained to a system in which success was determined by rigid rules and intractible aesthetics. Delacroix gave you exotic paintings of a similar type, but he too diverged from the classical presentation of them and thereby won himself a place in the pre-Impressionist pantheon.

The Bocklin is a marvel, in places, of palpable representation. I forget the title of the painting, but no matter. It's really about his fantastically luminous marble wall against a brooding, storm-laden sky. I wondered, while looking at this wall, why everybody was stuck with the Van Goghs. But, of course, that's me and while I "get" Van Gogh in my own way, the nuances of perception were not his strong suit. Van Gogh was among the first painters to offer up his inner life as something to be gazed upon and valued for itself. A hard thing to do at the time, and I admire him for it. But I must admit that I often prefer the text of his paintings - the great letters to his brother and patron, Theo - to the paintings themselves. They just don't have much to offer visually, which is not a good thing in a painting. And in this regard I'm sure almost any cross section of sophisticated museum-goers will disagree with me.

At any rate, yes, I'd rather look at these particular academic paintings than most of the impressionist paintings in the place. There are some good Monets, of course, a few decent Cezannes, and an early Renoir
- a Diana done when the artist was twenty-six (at the Gleyre Atelier, if I'm not mistaken) - that could almost be a Courbet.

However, why not have a mixture rather than have the Impressionists predominate? It does the public a great disservice by subtracting from art history significant movers and shakers who have merely fallen, through some sort of coattail consensus among art collectors and historians, out of our consciousness.
We, the public, should not only know who the Impressionists were opposing - but what. It is possible that, upon seeing the opposition, we, the public, might like it better - or, at any rate, just as well. Many excellent painters, now relegated to basements or provincial museums, could easily hang in the rooms the Impressionists have taken over. And they could be purchased with just a few astute and cash-conscious de-accessionings.

This is our National Gallery and I think it should be as good as it can be. It's pretty damned good as it is, but it is lacking both in great European art of the 19th-century (where are the Danes, Poles, Russians, among others?), but also in American art, which seems to stop cold in about 1910. Where is the contract that severs a national institution from living painters and refuses to include anybody other than the Pop, Absract Expressionist and Minimalist Crowd? If Rothko can have an entire gallery in the East Wing, why shouldn't equal space be given over to John Koch, Raphael Soyer, Ivan Albright, Paul Cadmus - to name a few of his realist contemporaries. Our National Gallery does not tell OUR story and it ought
to. Moreoever, we ought to insist that it does.

The great Barnes Collection is about to move from Merion, PA, where it's been since its founder, Albert Barners, inventor of something called "argyrol", built it. Mr. Barnes didn't really like people to visit him
- except certain artists - so he fashioned a wall of byzantine procedure and limited opportunity around his collection. Once it was "finished", he mandated that no more paintings could be purchased. And, of course, all his odd hours and arbitrary schedules had to be observed as well. He was rich enough to be able to have his rather capricious rulings enforced. It's always been hard to get into the Barnes Collection.
And when it moves to Philadelphia, it won't be much easier.

His choice in art was formed partly by his old high school chum, William Glackens, whom Barnes dispatched to Europe for some high-toned looking-around.
Glackens returned with the nucleus of Barnes'
collection - with its essential design and direction, in fact. A frustrated impressionist, Glackens leaned toward Renoir and bought Barnes' first little ladies.
(Taking the reins himself, Barnes ended up purchasing a hundred and seventeen others.)

What's wrong with this picture? Nothing and everything. First of all, Barnes was an American citizen and, as such, was more or less obliged to love French modernist painting first while ignoring the art of his countrymen. Glackens, as his advisor, did him a great disservice in steering him toward France. He could have easily introduced him to a cadre of artists who were far more revolutionary than Renoir and lived right in New York City; they were, in fact, Glackens'
own friends and colleagues. I always wonder why in hell Glackens did that, when he was already privy to the revolutionary cell that might have drawn an eccentric millionaire like Albert Barnes. But, no, not only did Barnes relinquish that opportunity, he jumped over the pond as a sort of critical occupation and kept purchasing Van Goghs (no Frenchmen, he, but close enough), Gaugins, Soutines (not a garden-variety Parisian either), and other modernists - most notably, Henri Matisse, who would eventually do a mural for the big house and install it there.

It is sobering to realize that Barnes had a hand in changing history. If he and other similarly motivated collectors had lost their money somehow, the face of American museums would be at least somehwat different.
Instead of intoning the names of Monet, Manet, and Gauguin, you'd likely be talking about John Sloan, Robert Henri, and perhaps even Glackens, (William) himself. Big blockbuster exhibits might well feature the shenanigans of Sloans' alcoholic wife, Dolly, of whom he made an "honest woman" (at least most of the time); Robert Henri's passionate parochialism, by which every moment and every thing could be transformed into art; Ernest Lawson's famously bejewelled coloration (and not Pissarro's, say.) We'd have different artist stereotypes: the artist uberman or artist worker; the artist/ballplayer, artist/politician. Artists would be celebrated for confronting modern realities and not going off into the country - or dodging out on a major war - and tracking the nuances of light on the facades of country cathedrals or popular trees. It would be honorable to talk politics - perhaps even to vote in minor elections. It would be a good thing to acknowledge poverty and not merely glorify the pleasant and predictable. And while some of Barnes'
major purhases are not necessarily soft-core, they are generally focused on either the gestural or decorative. By the early Nineteen hundreds, the best American art had begun to eschew that and had finally come into its own. Yet after having made a decent beginning, its potential champions and collectors abandoned it and turned to the more rarefied regions of pure design, pure tonality - pure formalism.

It's interesting to note that this turnabout was not necessarily foreordained. The artists who had been Glackens' illustrator colleagues and students were the enfants terribles of the early Twentieth Century and were in an excellent position to steal the thunder of their more genteel betters at our nation's bastions of polite culture. But the Armory Show changed all that and essentially made a purely American statement irrelevant - even embarrassing - to the sophisticated collector. Rather than haunt the dankish studios of George Luks - or find themselves holding a filthy glass full of lousy red wine at an Independents'
exhibit Downtown - the new collector went to Alfred Steiglitz and let him talk on and on about the hot properties of Paris, like Picasso and Matisse and their American counterparts, particularly John Marin.
Steiglitz passionately believed that representational art (except anything the camera could produce) was passe and he promoted artists who had found their own personal and artistic salvation at the Armory Show, with its startling European innovators. Collectors like John Quinn walked away from the Ashcan School and into Steiglitz' gallery - and they stayed. Barnes was rich enough to leave the country early and often. As he scoured Paris, New York City and other American places were ignored, setting the stage for the backlash of the Nineteen Thirties, when regionalism had its brief, but triumphant, reign in the art world of the Depression. Of course, few people collected it. That's not necessarily what it was for.

I suppose what riles me about Barnes and his ilk is their tremendous influence. On a recent NPR program, for which the presenter, Susan Stamberg, had travelled to Merion, Pennsylvania to pay homage to The Collection, she, Ms. Stamberg, could hardly contain her astonishment at seeing so much great work in one setting. It is arguable whether Barnes collection is a great one, but it certainly is big. I'm wondering what she would think if she had an opportunity to study the basements of American museums and see what a wealth of early and mid-Twentieth century painting that was stuck there. A lot of it isn't that good either, but because of the disproportionate influence of Barnes and his ilk, that's the stuff that gets buried. Even a lousy Renoir is seen more often than Sloan or Henri. Mediocre Matisses and Vuillards get more exposure than the best artists America has to offer. Even Andrew Wyeth, our only living Superstar, doesn't have quite the clout as the above-average French modernist. (Close, though.) Few other American painters, however, have quite the gravitas of dozens of European artists. Nor is the average American citizen even aware that they exist at all.

We now live in a time of almost supernatural productivity in the arts. Painting - a sort of esoteric pastime - is being produced at a rate that would astonish atelier artists of the late Nineteenth-century. However, the best representational painting in this country is still a well-kept secret. It is collected avidly by the very few who seem to lack the egotism of most collectors and therefore keep a low profile. The "name"
collectors outnumber these souls almost exponentially.
Take a gander at any Top One Hundred collections and they are copycats for the most part. And the names you often hear are the same ones that had once charmed the ears of Albert Barnes - who did not start the virus, but was eager to spread it.

My point is not that one's own country should necessarily be first in our minds as we think about which art, or artists, should matter. No art collection is good because it's "patriotic." (The opposite is more likely.) However, it would seem to make relatively good sense for anybody who's been bit with the collecting bug to try to look around a little before succumbing to the exotic-itis Barnes and his colleagues did. They essentially searched for expensive novelties - and got them! So you could call them successful according to their lights. But not to mine. A collector has a public responsibility, in my view, and should be held to a higher standard than that of some others. His or her collections - if they're expensive enough - will be bequeathed to institutions or become institutions themselves. They will be regarded as the gold standard. They will set the pace for other collections, the ever-increasing bouts of acquisitiveness-to-come. Their legacy very much outlives them - and I'm sure they'd all be very happy to know it.

In Barnes' case, I'm not happy in the least. His search was essentially for the novel and eccentric. A minor passion, but not worthy of being on the world's
stage.