"People needed paintings, and West was one of the better sources to get them".
Who needed paintings to tell people what the world looked like now that photographs could do the job better?
"There is no need for paintings, or barriers, either," he said.
"Motorsports needs its paintings.
Mr. Meese had brought along a giant triptych of graffitilike scrawls and collaged bric-a-brac but decided that the installation needed more paintings.
And who can deal better with the question of why a place like Las Vegas, with its false Manhattan and false Venice, needs real paintings by Degas, Cezanne, Manet and Warhol?
The building housing the federation was being sold, and a new home was needed for paintings and murals by Israel Bernbaum, a Holocaust survivor born in Warsaw, who donated them to the center upon his death in 1993.
"We still need more Flemish paintings," Mr. Marandel said.
The only problem is these paintings need a new architecture and there isn't any".
"Whenever we speak to our restorer," Mr. Rockefeller wrote, "he asks which paintings need drool removal".
