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.
By painting colors and lines and forms seen in quickened mood I was seeking to make this mood vibrate as a phonograph does. This was the origin of the paintings in The Frieze of Life.
Painting picture by picture, I followed the impressions my eye took in at heightened moments. I painted only memories, adding nothing, no details that I did not see. Hence the simplicity of the paintings, their emptiness.
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.
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.
