But what is your final goal, you may ask. That goal will become clearer, will emerge slowly but surely, much as the rough draught turns into a sketch, and the sketch into a painting through the serious work done on it, through the elaboration of the original vague idea and through the consolidation of the first fleeting and passing thought.
It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning.
The only pictorial matter that is of interest to me is the matter and sentiments brought about by the work itself.
This idea of art for art's sake is a hoax.
Take hold of objects by their centres, not by their lines of contour. The contour accentuated uniformly and beyond proportion, destroys plasticity, bringing forward those parts of an object which are always most distant from the eye, namely its outlines.
Remember the enemy of all painting is gray: a painting will almost always appear grayer than it is, on account of its oblique position under the light.
Enough of art. It's art that kills us. People no longer want to do painting: they make art.
If you understand a painting beforehand, you might as well not paint it.
Art is a foreign city, and we deceive ourselves when we think it familiar.
I paint the way someone bites his fingernails; for me, painting is a bad habit because I don't know nor can I do anything else.