Reflection on Visiting the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Barnett Newman's floor-to-ceiling "Voice of Fire."

A basic principle of modern art: the larger the canvas, the smaller the talent. It is a simple thing to achieve impact just by drawing something very large. Everybody is doing it these days. It is fantastically tedious.

A similar principle applies in rock music: the greater the volume, the lesser the talent. As Keith Richards has noted, the essential trick of rock is to achieve an impression of power without resorting to volume.