The arts matter because they define the soul of a civilisation.
John Tusa
... a little strange ...
... the presence of absence ...
It isn't the artworks which are on display, but the extravagant visitors. Public art relies on massive scale to sell itself. Symmetry has a cultural authority but is fundamentally irrational.
Decadent art is not eliminated by its repression, but deeply internalized as advanced art's necessary opposite.
Donald Kuspit
The meaning of decadence is assumed to be self-evident, and decadent art is assumed to be inherently despicable.