You have to be free to care about art—especially for its own sake—which bothers me these days; hanging on walls. Photos of “museum quality” seem so artificial, meaning fake. It’s an art-ifice, artful sometimes, not exactly living, if it doesn’t mean life but only itself. You have to be free from hunger and cold to want art. It’s like wanting a beautiful body for its own sake; separate from the life forces of dedication, familiarity, devotion, and companionship. You have to commit to those and have them every day, but you have to be free to take the beauty only for a moment, for a thrill, a fleeting jolt of ecstasy. Any time you spend with love is a comfort compared to that. Art for life’s sake may be the open door to peace, but back through darker corridors lie the manufacturers who market art for commerce. Art for commerce’s sake, for its own gain. Duchamp is laughing now, confirmed in his prophesy that bartering any thing for money is artful if it works. Sell a toilet seat, sell a piece of Limoges, a Picasso or a Dubuffet, an armoire for clothes though it meant to hold arms. WEapons are cruel, but artful, isn’t that a laugh? Life is rented—it’s a lease that expires. Life ought to be art, rented from the museums, safer in the streets.