This kind of painting with its large frames is a bourgeois drawing-room art. It is an art dealer’s art-and that came in after the civil wars following the French Revolution.
I learned early about the misery and dangers of life, and about the afterlife, about the external punishment which awaited the children of sin in Hell.
Any number of holier-than-thou honorable realists walk around in the belief that they have accomplished something, simply because they tell you for the hundredth time that a field is green and a red-painted house is painted red.
Certainly a chair can be just as interesting as a human being. But first the chair must be perceived by a human being… You should not paint the chair, but only what someone has felt about it.
Anybody who perceives colors can become a painter. It’s simply a question of whether or not one has felt anything and whether one has the courage to recount the things one has felt.
