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The subtitle of your book is "From Warhol to Now." Why did you want to begin with him?

I think that there's a great difference in art generally before him, and certainly in American art before him. He's a kind of watershed. I think he's a figure. He's a character. Within that character are a lot of tumultuous changes in art. And he sort of sums them up. In Warhol, it's this mixture of utter realism about our actual world that we actually live in. But also a sort of romanticism about what it is to be an artist, that it takes a leap of the imagination to be an artist. I don't think at all that his cynicism or his irony is all that he is. I think his irony and cynicism are connected to a sincerity about who we are. We give culture a kind of job, which is to tell us who we are, and he's a very good oracle of who we are.

Sarah Vowell Sarah Vowell's column appears on the Arts & Entertainment site every other Wednesday. + Biography + Archives

One thing in the book that seems rather Warholian is that there are almost as many pictures of the artists themselves as pictures of their work. Why did you do that?

I don't think you learn anything important from seeing photos of the artists. But I don't know how important it is seeing those reproductions either. I'd rather have no pictures at all or something that goes against the grain a bit. And I think portraits of the artists does go against the grain. I think that's why I'm on the cover. Because then it's more like the world of cookery books or show biz or something. And I think that's annoying to the holy creed of the art world.

You have a hilarious section that's a guide to art magazines. What's your current favorite?

I think they're all as objectionable as each other.

My favorite place to read criticism right now is the Focus on the Family web site. It's a Christian fundamentalist site and they do movie reviews that are remarkable, because whoever the reviewer is watches movies actually believing that art can do something to people. Like that "Titanic" could mess with young girls minds about romance, or a hilarious litany of all the ways the "South Park" movie is devoid of redeeming social value. Do you think secular critics can come at writing about art with that kind of passion?

No, actually. I'm a pure insider. I'm not at all a secular critic. Every strata of my being is the art world. I was born into it. I don't have any outside-the-art-world-ness. It's just that it's possible to be in the art world and not speak that language or to know that it is a language, one language amidst others. You asked earlier what magazines I don't particularly read and I never would read "Art News" because it's all rubbish. Because the people writing it don't know anything about art. I really am interested in art. I do see the contemporary art world as a continuation of art history and I take art history very seriously. It's a source of values to me and a source of meaning, it makes sense out of life. But my drive is to be as intense and realistic and creative and imaginative about that as I can. So that causes me to write like this. But I have absolutely no interest at all in what people outside the art world have to say about art. Because you need to know what you're talking about. I'm not interested in people going against the grain who don't know what the grain is. Of course I'm interested in people against the grain who do know what the grain is. Because they've got something to offer.

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