Since it is my field I might as well put my two cents in: I'm not much of a fan of Michael Kimmelman's art criticism. He's better writing about music. Before medical problems set in he was apparently on his way to a career as a concert pianist. He writes about art with the same seriousness he brings to music, a seriousness that puts him ahead of most of the critics at The Times, but it's not enough. I haven't read the whole piece, though I will [I tried] and off the bat he's making generalizations he shouldn't. But his central point is on target. It's not the painters of the early 50's Pollock and deKooning who will represent the high water mark of American modernism, nor even the next generation of Rauschenberg and Johns; it's the one following. He seems to be waxing romantic about the whole thing, which is too bad. Bear in mind however that although you political types know his work only through its popularization as a cynical manipulation, the most important American 'artist' of the 20th century [the scare-quotes are used to show that this absurdly excludes John Ford and Orson Welles] was Warhol. Without a doubt.