Painting Is An Essentially Concrete Art And

The Beautiful Is In Nature, And It Is Encountered Under The Most Diverse Forms Of Reality. Once It Is Found It Belongs To Art, Or Rather To The Artist Who Discovers It.

I Am Not One Who Was Born In The Custody Of Wisdom; I Am One Who Is Fond Of Olden Times And Intense In Quest Of The Sacred Knowing Of The Ancients.

On The Left Is The Realist Tradition Of The 19th Century, With Its Impulse To Social Description, Radical Criticism And Meditation On Things As They Are... Culminating In Courbet At His Mightiest (the Studio, The Funeral At Ornans And A Portrait Of A Trout That Has More Death In It Than Rubens Could Get In A Whole Crucifixion).

I Am Fifty Years Old And I Have Always Lived In Freedom; Let Me End My Life Free; When I Am Dead Let This Be Said Of Me: 'he Belonged To No School, To No Church, To No Institution, To No Academy, Least Of All To Any Regime Except The Regime Of Liberty.'

I Deny That Art Can Be Taught, Or, In Other Words, Maintain That Art Is Completely Individual, And That The Talent Of Each Artist Is But The Result Of His Own Inspiration And His Own Study Of Past Tradition.