David,

Many thanks for your latest post.

I did warn you it was going to be simplistic. I offered no proofs just a clarification of the position I currently occupy (no more, no less).

As for my charge of 'fraudulently perverting the course of artistic evolution', you should remember the golden rule: if it looks absurd, smells absurd, sounds absurd, and feels absurd … then it's absurd. If you would prefer a more sober comment on the post-modern theorists then I would say that I am not fully convinced by their arguments. I do not reject all they have to offer but I cannot help feeling that the structures they raise are not wholly substantial - with reference, I should add, to post-modern painting. Can I, at least, charge them with wilful satanism in the face of moral sensibilities? Frightening children? Inbreeding?

I will admit that my final comments were not well crafted but I am still referring to the post-modern critics - nothing else.

What I am trying to say, albeit awkwardly, is that we may have to wait until history casts its judgement before we can finally nail down the question of post-modern painting. Post-modern art-critical theory contains, I feel, an element of prematurity (if there is such a word).

It is the post-modern critic (with his binoculars) that I mean when I say, 'I find it dangerous …'.

'Every work of art is a child of its time.' Kandinsky (I think). Every artist is the product of his environment, experiences, culture, history, language, writing systems etc. There is a relationship. How much more profound do you want or need the relationship to be?

The point I was trying to make (apparently very badly) about Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin is that if you imagine a critic standing in the midst of impressionism and looking forward into the future for a new theory of art, would he be able to see the immense contribution these three men were already making? All of them, in one way or another, removed themselves from the immediacy of their societal landscape. (I really do not like that phrase but I am hoping that you will understand what I mean.) Any attempt to construct a new theory of art at that time would have suffered grievously from their omission.

I stand one hundred percent behind my Oldenburg quote: 'square which becomes blobby'

Finally, and this is where I like getting really facetious at this time of night:

It has never crossed my mind to wave anything at all at the marxist cabal of the Frankfurt School.

But now you mention it…

P.S. It looks like there are another two posts from you so this might be out of sequence.

Best wishes,