In art, beauty has to be won, but the work becomes harder as the sheer noise of desecration--amplified now by the Internet--drowns out the quiet voices murmuring in the heart of things.

A new book on icons stretches the definition too far. Unlike the Coca-Cola bottle, true icons have power and stand at the border of forbidden things

The prevailing attitude about contemporary art in British society is one of scorn and repudiation of old ideals, yet American visitors and many of the British people still believe that beauty matters, and that you cannot pour scorn on beauty without losing sight of the meaning of life.

Free speech absolutists express general constitutional values shared by most of us, but they're useless in figuring out how to treat offensive speech in the real world.

There is something profoundly wrong on American campuses that smile on the desecration of theU.S. flag but prohibit damage to our enemies' banners.

As aesthetic values lose their importance to the European public, the old European sense that sacred things are not for sale has been replaced by the American attitude toward branding the downtown urban space.

For the last 50 years, the bourgeoisie has been quietly disappearing and depriving the art world of its target, yet there is one last redoubt where the bourgeoisie can be corralled into a corner and spat upon, and that is the opera.

General Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said military investigators have not yet found any evidence that American interrogators treated the Koran with disrespect.