Ah, this has been standing here for centuries. The premier work of man perhaps
in the whole Western world, and it's without a signature: 

    Chartres. 

A celebration to God's glory and to the dignity of man. All that's left, most
artists seem to feel these days, is man. Naked, poor, forked radish. There
aren't any celebrations. Ours, the scientists keep telling us, is a universe
which is disposable. 

You know, it might be just this one anonymous glory of all things -- this rich
stone forest, this epic chant, this gaiety, this grand, choiring shout of
affirmation, which we choose when all our cities are dust -- to stand intact,
to mark where we have been, to testify to what we had it in us to accomplish.

Our works in stone, in paint, in print, are spared. Some of them for a few
decades or a millennium or two, but everything must finally fall in war or wear
away into the ultimate and universal ash. The triumphs and the frauds, the
treasures and the fakes. 

A fact of life: we're going to die. 

"Be of good heart," cry the dead artists out of the living past. "Our songs will
all be silenced -- but what of it? Go on singing."

Maybe a man's name doesn't matter all that much.

    -- Orson Welles, in "F for Fake"