If we are looking today for a general level of art of serious purpose, art with profound content supported by significant aesthetics, we will not find it. Contemporary art has failed. If we are satisfied with superficial, artificial art that manipulates aesthetics for empty abstract, decorative effects, then we truly live in a "golden" artistic age ... for this kind of art is everywhere. The degree of present-day artistic collapse, compared to the height of past artistic achievement, can be seen in the velocity and extent of precipitous decline during the 20th Century, increasing since World War II. In...