“For me, pleasure has to be present because I think the world is already boring enough. When we experience a tedious work of art, whether it’s in the opera, theater, a gallery, or an album, no matter how conceptual it is (and today we live in a time full of justifications), I think we’re not offering what really matters in art: a bath of beauty. Beauty in the broadest sense possible. But pleasure can be explicit in the work, or implicit. And something obvious, which becomes clear when we look back at the artists we admire or at specific works, is that there’s a lot of pleasure behind them. It can be provocative, intellectual, or sexual pleasure.”

D