Egg wash and the vestiges of lapus lazuli, papyrus rolls pilfered from monastic enclaves gone feral and unpopulated, apprenticeship until the unique whorls of any individual finger are sanded off, committed fully to the virtuosity of the languid figure and the light that isn’t cast onto objects so much as pulled from their surfaces, holding fast to the diet of conviction and the school of Adamo me fecit . . .

Pounding nails, demolishing sodden drywall, taping soffit, moving bedroom sets and ill-tuned pianos, taking stacks of dirty cash and staying true to ramen and peanut butter on crackers, abuzz with the hustle of the come-up and the insistence that something fresh and brash and uncompromising could be derived from depicting with cruel accuracy the absurd dizzying tangle that comes at the end, when the potential of having an existence in the libidinal economy dries up and the loathing and sagging . . .

Furriers and peignoirs and distaff family crests in D’Avignon, falconers and promenades and candelabras in Ferrara, everyone intoxicated on alchemical slurries of nostalgia and chaste propriety, with the funereal oration of Pericles committed to memory and the clowns of all the grand houses paying karmic recompense to cousin brides and half-sister concubines.

A time and place when boycott this could be contemplated as the kiss off critical coup de grace, without ever being struck down with the deadly and deadening irony that a set of paintings deemed verboten were the only set of paintings created that year powerful enough to midwife anything remotely so visceral and significant.

Counterpoint: the Porsche douche factor, which somehow marries confidence and insecurity and forgot that the text is king and the author is dead. There is much force, classically deployed, to be unlocked from that forgetting.