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GREAT ART: What one normally wants from art, to take a particular if arguably somewhat conservative viewpoint, is a feeling that the work in question lies far above one's own creative abilities. I mean if, as so often happens nowadays, one is left with the highly distinctive impression that, had one so desired, one could have done just as well if not better than the so-called artist oneself, then the work in question is obviously open to suspicion and probably leaves one either unmoved or, worse still, dejected.

Now when, by contrast, one contemplates a Dali, there is usually no doubt in one's mind that the scene or event it portrays is a work of genius, that skill and imagination have been combined to virtually the utmost possible extent to produce something both precious and inimitable. It is great art, despite its comparatively strange, wayward, and at times positively horrific nature, because it still manages to convince the viewer of having something extraordinarily ingenious about it which he could never hope to emulate himself. With great art one generally feels oneself to be in the presence of the divinity of man, of man become great creator through the manipulation of a technique and imagination which induces in one a feeling of amazement as to the seemingly infinite extent of man's capacity for artistic greatness.

Unfortunately, however, modern art so often falls short of artistic greatness (not to mention genuine art) because, lacking both the requisite devotion and talent for the execution of anything great, its practitioners have lost track of the essentially idealistic nature of art and allowed their productions to become perverted into something so pathetically commercial, and hence dominated by market forces, as to be anything but artistic. It isn't, by any account, a straightforward reflection of contemporary life that one desires from art; for such a reflection can be captured exceedingly well by the predominantly impersonal use of a journalistic camera. Still less is it the portrayal of a blank canvas, or of a canvas portraying, at best, a few straight or squiggly lines and cryptic blotches. On the contrary, it is the brilliance, skill, imagination, spirit, purpose - in sum, the personality which a great artist inevitably bestows upon his work that the genuine art enthusiast desires, not the distressing spectacle of exhibits which resemble the predictably banal productions of the average junior-school art class!