«I JUST READ EVERYTHING»

I agree with Camille Paglia that many feminists have underestimated the power of hormones in human behaviour and the creative power of sexual desire. I agree with her that many feminists have a Rousseau-ian view of human nature where they expect to be able to dress as they like, and go where they like, and drink as they like, and never come to harm. I agree that women who stay in abusive relationships are complicit in the violence. I even agree with her about the link between male obsession and achievement. I think it's quite possible that there is "no woman Mozart because there is no woman Jack the Ripper." And I absolutely agree about the damage postmodernism and its boring theories have done to culture and art.

"In the 21st century," she says in her brilliant new book, Glittering Images, "we are looking for meaning, not subverting it. The art world, mesmerised by the heroic annals of the old avant-garde, is living in the past." We are living, she says, "in the age of vertigo." We must, she says, "relearn how to see." And so, as you might expect, she shows us how. In a survey of artworks from ancient Egypt to contemporary America, she argues for the need to bring history and scholarship back into the teaching of art. "What I'm trying to show," she tells me, "is how it's possible to combine everything in one form of approach, to literature and art."

-The Independent