I'm wid you all the way on El Greco, John... Too much danged white pigment. Reminds me of them Elvis on Velvets... But, hey you wany painterly and nice, heck make that great us of light, thry on Jan Van Eyke. Okay, his brother may have lended a hand but like who cares...

But as fir the oldsters, when it came to passion, Goya, Goya, Goya... Now that dude had it...

But heck wid them old masters. They was way more then they're collectively craqcked up to be. Rambrandt? Okay, hald his stuff was good anf the other half wasn't....

But we eventially made it into the world of "modern" art in the late 1800's and the post impressionists and things really got cookin'. That is, IMHO, of course, with Van Gahn and his buddy Paul Gaughin... I loved those two nuts, ahhhh, guys....

The rest of art until now is such a danged blur of styles and medium but they all have shaped the way we look at the world. Hey, I ian't wild about Picasso (who's "Boy with a Pipe" has just brought $104M) but I saw his "Guernica" in New Yorkabout 20 years ago and was really moved by its power... But a lot of his cubist stuff I think really was purdy lousy. Might of fact, most cubist stuff is. That is, IMHO...

But the 20th century was the century of art. From the ashcan illustraters to the Op artists. From De Chirico to Jasper Johns. From the Father of the Dadaist, Marcel Duchamp to Richard Estes's photo-realism. From Kirchner to Litchenstein to Pollack to Morris Lewis to, to, to...

And lets not let Paul Klee go unmentioned...

As fir the masters, hey, they built it and deserve some credit. Durer was such a wonderfull printmaker. And Bosch was a trip and half. I mentioned the Van Eykes, Rembrandt and the like and they do deserve a lot of credit, but fir me, the 20th century, beginning about 10 years early was the greatest century ever for art...

Like I said, MO...

Bobert