Talent doesn’t show in the pyrotechnics or the hammy grabs for attention. In writing, real talent comes in the byways of a story or a review. Here Lance Esplund is talking about Duane Hanson. He’s trying to set up a comment on the sculptor’s work but in the process he mints a valuable aphorism about art:

When an artwork closes down too tightly on its subject — when it fixates on mimicry at the expense of metaphor — it brings the relationship between object and viewer to a standstill.

A Virtuoso with Line (Wall Street Journal)