The Masterpiece

by Fiona Davis

The hierarchy in the art world had been established hundreds of years ago: Oil painting trumped watercolors, portraits trumped landscapes. And all of that, summed up as “fine” art, trumped commercial art. Illustrators lay at the very bottom of the totem pole.

Memento mori, where an object in the artwork served as a warning of death. Usually, it was a skull or an hourglass, a bowl of rotting fruit. Grand Central, in its decaying splendor, was the embodiment of a memento mori work of art.

Funny how art acted as a separation between those who deemed themselves cultured and those who did not.

America needs more gathering places, like pubs. It offers a sense of community that otherwise we don’t have, wandering about in our own little worlds, disappearing into our flats at night.”

with great effort, you can succeed, even at the eleventh hour.

Virginia’s life up until last year had been about mitigating risk, doing nothing out of the ordinary, all while holding the people and things she loved as close to her as possible. Too close, it turned out. She’d learned the hard way that growth and change were unavoidable. Only once she’d undertaken her own crusades had everything fallen into place.