Live with the consequences of your deeds and enjoy the warmth they create. The only warmth in the cold, indifferent universe is that which we create ourselves. And that is what a work of art...

One of the many innovations of modernism was the new demands it placed on the audience. Music, painting, literature, even architecture, would never again be quite so ‘easy’ as they had been.

The curious fact is that biology tells us nothing about desire. And, when you think about it, culture — novels, movies, opera, and quite a lot of painting — is about desire, how we manage...