Robert Peters, whom I erroneously baptized "Peter Roberts" (sorry, you
may call me Massa Pablo):

>the word progress for me does not necessarily mean that their is an
>arriving point.  In art surely there is none.

We both agree to this last statement.  However, our modern notion of
progress (I mean, from XVIII century to the present) needs of the idea
of an arriving point.  Which was this arriving point is another problem,
because there was many of them.  The falling of this idea, the revealing
of its illusory character, is distressing for some (some, not all)
contemporary artists and philosophers, because there's no "place to go",
or at least they feel so.

>>I know that you want to see the history of art as an epic poem or a
>>novel, with heros, dragons, castles, princesses and, of course...a plot.
>>That's beautiful and politically correct.
>
>Well, Pablo, you know obviously more about me than I do myself: that is
>clearly not my picture of the history of art.  I really do not know where
>you get that image from.  (But the idea of the dragon is charming to me.
>Any candidates? Wagner? Lloyd-Webber?)

I must confess that my irony about that image comes, perhaps, from my own
limitations, and not from a flourishing new conception of art history.  In
some way I envy people who still thinks it as an epic poem.  Lloyd Webber,
(whom I hate, by the way) wouldn't be a good dragon in that story; a dragon
needs of fire, and I doubt that Andy has more to give us than cat piss.
(However, he could be the princess...).

Pablo Massa
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