The Burnt Orange Heresy

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Two hours ago the Railway Expressman delivered the crated, newly published International Encyclopedia of Fine Arts to my Palm Beach apartment. I signed for the set, turned the thermostat of the air-conditioner up three degrees, found a clawhammer in the kitchen, and broke open the crate. Twenty-four beautiful buckram-bound volumes, eggshell paper, decide edged. Six laborious years in preparation, more than twenty-five hundred illustrations- 436 in full-color plates-and each thoroughly researched article written and signed by a noted authority in his specific field of art history.

Two articles were mine. And my name, James Figueras, was also referred to by other critics in three more articles. By quoting me, they gained authoritative support for their own opinions.

In my limited visionary world, the world of art criticism, where there are fewer than twenty-five men-and no women-earning their bread as full-time art critics (art reviewers for newspapers don't count), my name as an authority in this definitive encydopedia means Success with an uppercase S. I thought about it for a moment. Only twenty-five full-time art critics in America, out of a population of more than two hundred million! This is a small number, indeed, of men who are able to look at art and understand it, and then interpret it in writing in such a way that those who care can share the aesthetic experience.

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