Fame, we might say, is narcissistic compensation for therapeutic failure. What is therapeutic success? More particularly, what is the nature of the health gained by therapeutic success? The basic contention of this book is that the avant-garde artist makes his art to restore himself to health, an intention that not only informs his art but influences his public's perception of that art. That is, his art may or may not have therapeutic effect, however limited or extensive, but its therapeutic intention becomes its context of significance, the source of its value. Historically, every art dead-ends in the aesthetic; it becomes a decadent object of aesthetic contemplation, a formal conceit, or, as Robert Motherwell says, a kind of pleasingly organized “surface [for] the senses” – a form of visual flattery. But as he observes, it must have “an ethic” underneath its aesthetic surface, have ethical purpose even to be aesthetically engaging. To begin to take it seriously the perceiver must be unconsciously convinced that it stands in some sort of ethical relationship to him, that it has good intentions toward him, however “bad” it may look according to conventional aesthetic standards.