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The problem with art--to someone who's started looking at it again after a fairly long sabbatical--is that it is becoming subsumed by technology, in somewhat the same way poets were subsumed by rock & roll and rock & rollers became the new poets. (Robert Lowell, back in the day, asked if he thought Bob Dylan was a poet, answered "I think he hides behind his guitar.")

(Everything's subsumed within the parenthesis.)

The sublime is neither old fashioned or new fangled and may be expressed by almost anyone, almost anywhere, ever so rarely.

Because they tell the truth about their time and place, there are paintings that can really help you live your life. Likewise when a piece of writing looks and sounds like something you've never seen or heard before, and you know you must have more of it.

Anton Chekhov, supplying a short biography to a reader who asked for one, concluded thusly:

     'Among writers I prefer Tolstoy, among physicians,
      Zakharin. However, this is all rubbish. Write what you
      want. If there are no facts, substitute something
      lyrical.'

And Ashley, a person is not superficial who takes the time to watch the leaves fall and notes their color; that person is sublime.