The thing about Edward Hopper is that when my wife and I were expecting our first child we set up a nursery room, and it was a middle room in our house. You'd go through it, to get anywhere. So there it sat, waiting, this empty nursery room. All that stuff. Hope, fear--make that moral terror. The idea of bringing a child into the world. My depression, and feeling of what's the use in anything, anyway. And hope again. It was like having an Edward Hopper installation in our house. He has that sensibility, that psychology, that feeling, by the tail.

To me, it's fine to see something delicate as thought coming through a crude technique, when it does, when it can. That's the vision of the artist. Is it sentiment, in Hopper--I think so, yes. But there's nothing wrong with sentiment except when it's obvious, easy, crass, cheap. It's fine when it's so clearly observed and imagined that someone couldn't be making it up. Or... COULD they? I don't know, but when it's convincing, it's convincing.

   The thing that sets some artists apart from others, instead of trad tech, or sentimentality--there are lots of art-world insiders with both, despite mr. Ross's ARC manifesto--the thing is that some artists feel that straight painting is devalued, embattled, not reliably working--these would be us art-world establishment conspirators. A picture is like the devalued coins we are less and less apt to bend over to pick up, pennies, nickels, dimes, etc. And the other artists appear to think that finesse and hyperbole are enough to make it really work again. Fred Ross thinks he can make me interested in stuff that bores me silly because of my baby's first steps. Aw. No. I don't get it. I'm not against it, necesarily, but it sure does elude me. How do I get into it?

    Go back a few hundred years in a time machine and put up a poster, any picture of something, and see how many people look, and how long. Then come back and try it. People today are bombarded with complex artful images without leaving the house. Art has to grab attention, and for a while, before it can start to work. War And Peace's philosophy of history and humanity would just be hot air if it weren't the most engrossing soap opera on earth. Most of the novelty in contemporary art is a thin veneer over cheap obvious junk, in my opinion, but I still didn't care for the ARC stable as an alternative. Hockney's pen and ink portraits are as fine and more difficult than any drawings I saw there, yet they gleefully bash him without understanding his book, sounding like they read about one page of it.

All that incoherent gushing appreciation. It sounds like people are trying to convince themselves. All the smug dissing of successful contemporary artists sounds even more like they're trying hard to get it up for the art. It's like "oh I masturbated last light and it was so fantastically wonderful!" Good for you. Can you tell me anything about it that might be, you know, useful?

Sorry again. I'm supposed to be painting on a tight deadline, and this is how I sin.