About the author: Roger Kimball is managing editor of The New Criterion.

Anyone with a taste for absurdity will find much to admire in the more 'advanced' precincts of the contemporary art world. There are, first of all, the many grotesque elements of the spectacle: government-funded 'performance' artists (or do I mean performance 'artists'") who smear themselves with chocolate and then prance about haranguing their audiences about the evils of patriarchy, capitalism, etc (Karen Finley); conceptual artists who conceal themselves under a false floor in an art gallery, masturbating continuously for hours on end while broadcasting their sighs and whispers to gallery-goers who tread unknowingly above them (Vito Acconci); pathetic figures, like the chap whose most famous piece featured himself nailed to an automobile (Chris Burden); and then there are the...