Book critics agog at new De Kooning bio. Why would anyone in their right mind want to own or even look at these demented smears? This is not art, not even the art of the naif and amateur, this is madness and pure crystalline social pretension.

I had dinner with a friend from the West Coast who is intensely gullible and swooned over MoMA and DeKooning and all those thoroughly ridiculous post-Duchampian "artworks". She is however a scientist with a desire to be au courant and art is always a part of Herculean social ambition. It has all made me think I should paint again and create objects for barter which is what art largely is. In the absence of Cellini cups collectors must settle for what they can get.

For the record. I have always been fond of saying that collecting is rather like peasants hording potatoes inthe Thirty Years War.