I Don't Like You, Sherrie Levine and Richard Prince

As members of a generation steeped in mass media and nurtured in graduate education, and following the general collapse of established values in the sixties and of revolutionary idealism thereafter, they thrilled to suggestions that their automatic sophistication could see through, and dissipate, the antediluvian authority of their elders. But they suffered, too, from a loss of credible traditions that had made life seem real and reality seem livable. Many works in "The Pictures Generation" exude a melancholy of clever artifice masking inexpressible emotion.

(Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker)

We may not have much to be proud of now, but at least it's not New York, ca. 1977. (Moscow, ca. 1977, incidentally, is another story.)

Non Sequitur

I like when writers use creative ellipses to make our passions seem more interesting. For example:

After reading Rousseau's Discourse on the Origins of Inequality in 1755, Voltaire wrote to him, "I have received, Monsieur, your new book against the human race.... It makes one desire to go down on all fours." Five years later, Rousseau wrote to Voltaire. "Monsieur,...I hate you."

(via)

Jean-Antoine Watteau, La Surprise, ca. 1718

At least they could agree on their loathing of the rococo.