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321 And the Winner Isn’t She stands alone with arms (if she had arms) akimbo. Without a head, she lets us dream she’s smiling, frowning, ready to speak or just plain bored. The absence of legs suggests a woman totally at ease without a stitch. The breasts, if you must know, are not in textbook lingo “pendant when mature.” Upright in stone they seem too rounded for descent. Ditto the hips that shape a delta to the cleft where stone and statue stop. Whoever carved and polished smooth this headless Venus did it, I am told, by hand. Without electric tools he worked like Michelangelo with nothing else but mallets, chisels, and the skill to ransom elegance from stone. Even without a head and four appendages, what’s left bespeaks entirety amid the junk. I tour a gallery of Warhol wannabes, pseudo-Pollocks and other surfacers and splashers. Their lure is lost on me— as is the floor-to-ceiling 322 canvas chosen “Best in Show.” Totally covering one wall, it’s painted uniformly gray. It’s titled “Gray.” ...

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