"The theological hair-splitting that surrounded paintings' ability to persuade the eye while proving nothing by the Word or by reason, remains ubiquitous."

(p. 90)

"In this exact sense, choosing beauty over content (or choosing beauty as content) is always an act of sedition.  If we accept the cant of official culture, we must believe that the beauty we steal from any man-made thing is stolen from its more virtuous and metaphysical backstory, wherein 'real' beauty is said to reside... Andy Warhol would invent a strategy for feigning compliance by 'getting it exactly wrong,' by creating the effects of Abstract Expressionist paintings while stripping away the expressionist cant that informs their piss-elegant aura.  
So, all our great fortune begins with a crime"
(pg.97-98)

"Any citizen conversant in the discourse of relative beauty, with its perpetual promise of radical destabilization, must then be disposed to question established authority at every turn, because the experience of beauty itself invariably overrides it."
(p.116)

Dave Hickey, The INvisible Dragon

Now, doesn't that feel good and come with a blush of pride?