I can’t find it now, but I got a mailing from Artforum. “The Bible of the art world,” it said and a quote from Cindy Sherman. It was a special price, 60% off the cover price I think. Then Beverly stopped in and gave me a book by Rebecca Solnit called “A Field Guide to Getting Lost.” Beverly knows my spiel – she took a workshop.

My show came down in New York. I tend to exaggerate how well it went. Hurricane Sandy didn’t help. Jacquie Littlejohn has been saying how sorry she is – my beautiful show cut short. A small room on the second floor, lit up by drawings. The flood surge got to the houses across the street. All those flat files soaked through. People’s life’s work destroyed. I remember the sculptor who had a studio full of bronzes stashed away. Money in the bank. His retirement fund. This was up in Vermont, far from the flood surge. They were stolen – melted down for the bronze. You can depend on the price of bronze. Old currency. Hard currency Bottom line.

We find a new gold standard reading about the saints in Artforum. Blue Chip. Our Bible, St Cindy and the almighty curators. The modern museums the Gothic cathedrals of today. Places of pilgrimage. All those holy manuscripts in the flat files. Yes the rich patrons used to get in the paintings. Kneeling beside Jesus on the cross, or with their dog, or with their sword. Looking for the hard currency of immortality. Yes we have always been whores to the bottom line. It’s a trade – all about who you know – worldly matters. Yes our Art Bible is mostly advertisements.

It’s a busy street between the Mona Lisa and the gift shop – between the Mona Lisa and the marketplace. Warhol Street. Duchamp Boulevard. Plenty of bustle. Plenty of money. The latest thing – redefining what art means. Damien Hirst’s auction at Sotheby’s is now considered an art event. The art equivalent of a self-torched monk. The banal turned sacred by the price you pay. Do you remember the names of the monks? Sweet beings – reminders of what we could be. Mr. Hirst and his auction stick, like toxic waste in the mind canal. Immortal Hutzpah. Gets a lot of chapter and verse in our Bible. Sweet Mother Earth, how far down is the bottom line?

We are mesmerized by the Midas touch – a signature stops us in our tracks. There used to be other miracles. There still are, if you know where to look – side streets- back allies –quiet rooms – places where there is time to see the infinite subtleties of shadow. How Leonardo slowly breathed on the layers to get as close as he could to the reality of what he was seeing – trying to leave no trace of his hand as he layered, thin layers of binders, with tiny amounts of pigment, to create the form. “Sfumato” they called it. Not merely the appearance of smoke but its disappearance as well. Out of this smoke the human face emerges floating before our eyes. You can still see it if you can get past the noise, the guard and the bullet-proof glass, and just look at the Mona Lisa. It is a private matter this seeing. It is an event that occurs inside you – in your bodies sensations. “All our knowledge,” he wrote, “has its foundation in our sensations.” That is why painting was central to his work. So you look, a simple attention, and she comes in, her interior world, her spacious quiet consciousness reveals itself. Out of his quiet attentive work with the subtleties of shadow, a consciousness appears – out of his attention to three dimensions, on a two dimensional surface, a fourth dimension – doorway to expanded consciousness – to our interior world.