"What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism." — Octavio Paz

A society is defined as much by how it comes to terms with its past as by its attitude toward the future: its memories are no less revealing than its aims.

Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society.

A society is defined as much by how it comes to terms with its past as by its attitude toward the future: its memories are no less revealing than its aims.

Futurists wanted to suggest movement by means of a dynamic painting; Duchamp applies the notion of delay - or, rather, or analysis - to movement.

In the works of Duchamp, space begins to walk and take on form; it becomes a machine that spins arguments and philosophizes; it resists movement with delay and delay with irony.

In the United States, man does not feel that he has been torn from the center of creation and suspended between hostile forces. He has built his own world, and it is built in his own image: it is his mirror. But now he cannot recognize himself in his inhuman objects, nor in his fellows.

It has always surprised me that in a world of relations as hard as that of the United States, cordiality constantly springs out like water from an unstanchable fountain.

Fixity is always momentary. But how can it always be so? If it were, it would not be momentary - or would not be fixity.

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What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.