Another reason why later Cezanne is better than early

I read this passage from Annie's Dillard's Living By Fiction , her exploration of what makes writing meaningful, and thought it could be applied to painting just as well:

We judge a work on its integrity. Often we examine a work's integrity (or at least I do) by asking what it makes for itself and what it attempts to borrow from the world. Sentimental art, for instance, attempts to force preexistent emotions upon us. Instead of creating characters and events which will elicit special feelings unique to the text, sentimental art merely gestures towards stock characters and events whose accompanying emotions come on tap. Bad poetry is almost always bad because it attempts to claim for itself the real power of whatever it describes in ten lines: a sky full of stars, first love, or Niagara Falls. An honest work generates its own power; a dishonest work tries to rob power from the cataracts of the given. That is why scenes of high drama--suicide, rape, murder, incest--or scenes of great beauty are so difficult to do well in genuine literature. We already have strong feelings about these things, and literature does not operate on borrowed feelings.

Playing with Paul McCarthy

Here's a funny video of Paul McCarthy lampooning Willem De Kooning. McCarthy, of course, is an internationally famous artist whose work is closer to "South Park" and "Pee Wee's Playhouse" than De Kooning. His work is full of one-liner antics and the chaos of creative destruction. McCarthy gained notoriety outside the artworld for making an inflatable dog poop the size of a house in Switzerland. The wind caught the poo, flying it several hundred yards into power lines and a children's home.