Early-twentieth-century abstraction is art's version of Einstein's Theory of Relativity. It's the idea that changed everything everywhere: quickly decisively for good.

Kinkade estimated that one of his paintings hung in every twenty homes in America. Yet the art world unanimously ignores or reviles him. Me included.

Everyone goes to the same exhibitions and the same parties stays in the same handful of hotels eats at the same no-star restaurants and has almost the same opinions. I adore the art world but this is copycat behavior in a sphere that prides itself on independent thinking.

Many art-worlders have an if-you-say-so approach to art: Everyone is so scared of missing out on the next hot artist that it's never clear whether people are liking work because they like it or because other people do. Everyone is keeping up with the Joneses and there are more Joneses than ever.

A canon is antithetical to everything the New York art world has been about for the past 40 years during which we went from being the center of the art world to being one of many centers.

If only we could persuade galleries to observe a fallow period in which for two months every other year new and old works of art could be sold in back rooms and all main galleries would be devoted to revisiting shows gone by.

Yes 85 percent of the art you see isn't any good. But everyone has a different opinion about which 85 percent is bad. That in turn creates fantastically unstable interplay and argument.

When art wins everyone wins.

A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else.

Rumors sound of galleries asking artists for upsized art and more of it. I've heard of photographers asked to print larger to increase the wall power and salability of their work. Everything winds up set to maximum in order to feed the beast.