“Religion, ritual, and art began as one and a religious or metaphysical element is still present in al art. Art, no matter how minimalist, is never simply design. It is always a ritualistic reordering of reality… Art is a shutting in in order to shut out. Art is a ritualistic binding of the perpetual motion machine that is nature. The first artist was a tribal priest casting a spell, fixing nature’s daemonic energy in a moment of perpetual stillness. Fixation is at the heart of art, fixation as stasis, fixation as obsession. The modern artist who merely draws a line across a page is trying to tame some uncontrollable aspect of reality. Art is spellbinding. Art fixes the audience in its seat, stops the feet before a painting, fixes a book in the hand. Contemplation is a magic act.

Art is order. But order is not necessarily just, kind, or beautiful. Order may be arbitrary, harsh, and cruel. Art has nothing to do with morality. Moral themes may be present, but they are incidental, simply grounding an art work in a particular time and place… Particularly in modern times, when high art has been shoved to the periphery of culture, it is evident that art is aggressive and compulsive. The artist makes art not to save humankind but to save himself. Every benevolent remark by an artist is a fog to cover his tracks, the bloody trail of his assault against reality and others.”

–Camille Paglia, “Sex and Violence, or Nature and Art” from inside Sexual Personae, 1990