Dealers were uninterested in my work, and after a year or so, I had to realize that they were SERIOUSLY uninterested. One of the comments I heard most often was that my work would not sell. I found this offensive because of the degrading implication that I should consider learning how to paint in a salable manner.

Then came disillusionment and self-doubts. Consistent, long-term rejection caused me to question and anguish over the quality of my work, and to wonder seriously whether I oughtto consider another profession.

I sulked, did a lot of frowning and cultivated a nonchalant cynicism. Months of analyzing however, and exhaustive discussions with other doubting, pouting artists helped me decide that the system must be the problem.

To be successful within the context of the art scene -the only success I could imagine in those days - I felt that I must find a way to outrage people or at least titillate them. The long attention artists like me lavished on such efforts had helped seal calculated provocation into the unwritten code of the system. A "can you top this" syndrome had emerged and long since evolved into a sort of circular tradition in contemporary art. Having sized up the situation, I was appalled; I saw a huge pushy crowd of artists out there on the cutting edge of the avant-garde, and no room for me.

The system was also unjust, I concluded, because it made the artist dependent upon the dealer, a businessman whose aesthetic sensitivities relied on the figures in his profit and loss columns. Unable to understand that the problem might be my work, my attitudes and my ignorance of the art market, I soothed my traumatized self-assurance with the fiction that alI art dealers are only merchants who devote themselves to commerce.