Physics and metaphysics of painting

The title of this essay by Louis Cattiaux, «Physics and Metaphysics of Painting» expresses its essence well, namely, the so rare meeting of a perfectly mastered technique with the highest inspiration, as the author himself writes:

«Art is rather like the marriage of patience and imagination, of imprudence and taste, of improvisation and order, of the invisible and the everyday, of the spirit and the weight of colour» or again «perfection and power can only be combined through the association of the most elevated mind with the clearest soul, in the most perfect body.»

I’m finishing a book on painting that might interest you, because I’m trying to analyze the mechanism of inspiration, and above all the means of remaining in a state of grace, which is the great secret of true artists.

Louis Cattiaux

This book deals with the so rare meeting of a perfectly mastered technique with the highest inspiration that makes the true artist. Because Louis Cattiaux is not a speculative thinker, he is able to speak of the awakening of the inner being and of the creating act, and depicts the abandonment which is fruitful only after long disciplines, and that royal way that leads to the identification with the infinity of the being. This is why the magic of the shapes and the colours of his pictures, of which numerous repro-ductions illustrate the book, as well as the weight of his words, awaken ancient memories within us.

Artists are unquestionably the most noble, as well as the most useful of men. What would become of us in this outragedly materialistic society, if our daily dullness was not enlightened by the glistening colours of rainbows?

Louis Cattiaux was born in Valenciennes, France, on August 17th, 1904. In 1932, he married Henriette Péré and with her he founded the short-lived modern art gallery «Gravitations», the name of which was taken from a collection of poems by Jules Supervielle. It was situated 3 Casimir Périer Street in Paris, where the couple was to settle definitively.

In 1934, Louis Cattiaux signed the manifesto of Transhylism together with such painters as Jean Lafon, Pierre Ino, Jean Marembert, and poets as Jules Supervielle and Louis de Gonzague Frick.

«Under the word Transhylism lies the desire to go beyond the realities, or the appearances, of matter, down to the very truth they conceal and translate, the very truth they intercept and signify. This attitude was not far from that of Surrealism […]. It took place in the same perspective, that of a poetical art, of a magic art, an art which was the quest for an absolute.» (Bernard Dorival, catalogue of Cattiaux exhibition at Musée des Beaux-Arts of Valenciennes, 1963).

In 1935, Louis Cattiaux gave up knife painting. He was very keen on pictorial technique and sought advice from Raoul Dufy about substances developed by Jacques Maroger. His painting went through constant evolutions due to his investigations. He started from a smooth and flat matter to end up with using a substance which so much looked vitrified and transparent that all the critics compare to enamel.

In fact, none of Cattiaux’s paintings had been varnished. He prepared his colours himself according to a technique he had acquired in studying the masters of the 15th century, among whom the Van Eyck brothers.

In 1938, Cattiaux started writing his major work The Message Rediscovered. This prophetic book is the outcome of all his quest. It is not possible, without reading or meditating upon it, to approach truly his pictorial work or his other writings. A deep unity emerges from all his works. Thus the magic of the shapes and the colours of his pictures appeal to us and they invite us to contemplate ourselves in the subtle language of those mirrors, just as the weight of his words mysteriously magnetizes us and awakens ancient memories within us.

He had a passion for hermetic philosophy, and this trend deeply marked his painting. In particular he got acquainted with Lanza del Vasto and James Chauvet.

The edition of the first twelve books of The Message Rediscovered came out in 1946. It was favourably welcome by René Guénon, with whom Cattiaux was in correspon-dence. At that time he started writing his own Physics and Metaphysics of Painting.

In the last years of his lifetime he was more and more absorbed in his quest for the Absolute and his thirsting for divine contemplation. He died in Paris on July 16th, 1953.

The title he chose perfectly encapsulates the essence of the work where can be found chapters dealing with painting processes as well as others dealing with the calling of the artist. Moreover, each topic is developed according to this twofold approach, for, he said, «art is rather like the marriage of patience and imagination, of imprudence and taste, of improvisation and order, of the invisible and the everyday, of the spirit and the weight of colour».

The so rare meeting of a perfectly mastered technique with the highest inspiration makes the true artist.

Cattiaux, a deeply personal nature endowed with a remarkable humour, a philosopher nurtured on the twofold source of Holy Scripture and Living Tradition, was quite obviously a pure Artist. When he writes «One must work a long time on the same work, but without effort, without boredom, without working as it were», it is clear that such a wish reflects his own behaviour. When he depicts «the abandonment which is fruitful only after long disciplines, fertilizing periods of asceticism», when he points his finger on «the royal way that leads to the identification with the infinity of the being», those are not the words of a speculative painter.

Only the Living One are able to speak without making themselves ridicule of the awakening of the inner being and of the creating act, and indeed Louis Cattiaux’s work is bursting with life. We do believe the theme of artistic –even though magic– experimentation, has rarely been dealt with so much depth, simplicity, limpidity and –in a word– with so much success. Those who know the Extracts of Louis Cattiaux’s letters to his friends will be glad to meet up again with the inimitable tone of someone who is a genuine Natural Philosopher.

May this first complete edition open the eyes of our contemporaries on the extraordinary work of an Artist who has been visited by the Muse and who is thus linked up to the Tradition.

Here is concealed a way to salvation in this harsh and dying Iron Age.

Emmanuel d’Hooghvorst made a selection of excerpts from each chapter of «Physics and Metaphysics of Painting» by Louis Cattiaux and published them as an article in the Swiss magazine «Inconnues» in 1954. They are presented here, categorized by theme.

DEDICATION

In praise of her who gave us the faculty of feeling and loving.
To the glory of him who taught us to put nature in order through Art.

«Creation reflects man, and the artist has the art he deserves, for the work is nothing more than the mirror of his nothingness, of his mediocrity, or of his magnified being».

INTRODUCTION

[…] This book is intended to encourage the production of their work in those who possess the innate gift, and it is written to enlighten those who cling stubbornly to the belief that one can penetrate Art through trickery, through force or through mediocrity.

Those who are called will have to endure for the love of their God, poverty and solitude, seeking no other consolation than their art, so as to put their vocation to the test and keep themselves whole until the uncertain day of the elective triumph . […]

When he has renounced all, he shall possess all . […]

« This s book is useless, for if you have not discovered Art in yourselves, nobody will make it known to you from outside ».

- Louis Cattiaux

BACKGROUNDS

[...] The physical paucity of contemporary works should encourage the quest for the embodiment of painting that is alive and free of all dross.

It should be remembered that perfection and power can only be combined through the association of the most elevated mind with the clearest soul, in the most perfect body.[...]

TECHNIQUE

One must work a long time on the same work, but without effort, without boredom, without working, indeed, and as Paul Valéry put it: «One must sustain one’s effort until the work done has removed the traces of work».

Detached meditation is involved in the finishing touches, which must give the maximum expression to the work without erasing or destroying anything. [...]

GENIUS

Patience is not sufficient here to successfully achieve such an assembly: profound meditation is necessary, as well as a particular kind of genius that depends on the power of internal life, and Buffon was wide of the mark when he said: «There is no genius without great patience», for patience is merely passive, whilst meditation is an active state, whose aim is the creative act.

Genius is thus like the illumination that appears when the internal chaos has finally unravelled, it accomplishes itself in solitary meditation. It is like the awakening of the secret and all-powerful being that lies dormant in all of us.

It is commonly said that genius is sublime, but we would argue that it is actually «sublimated».

When the artist attains the creative trance, he becomes like a drunken man who talks to himself, and who no longer cares whether he is being heard or not, for his message expresses the clarification of the internal darkness, and serves above all his own nature [...].

The outcome of meditation is creation. Thus, the artist lives his internal dream until the hallucination of the divine act. [...]

ORIGIN

«Art is magic or there is no art.» - The origin of art is not the result, as it is generally believed, of an aesthetic need, but actually of a need for magical domination. [...]

Music itself, and song and dance were originally no more than a medium for the magical thought whose purpose was to win over the hostile world or gain control over it.

Thus, all the arts have their origin in the prime obligation, for incarnate man, of defending himself on the three planes of the created world. It is not until after the end of the rite that he was able to become aware of the gratuitousness of art through the interplay of forms, sounds, colours and movements, and elevate its magic to the extent of making it an intermediary for communing with the great soul of the world which men call God.

So that we can say that particular magic has become elevated to general magic, and that art is the channel which allows us to communicate with the Universal.

When this occurs it is art; when it does not occur it is nothing.

The work of art is therefore a magical creation and, like procreation, it requires, in order to give rise to Being, a psychic charge produced by the spasm of love. That is why there are so few men and so few works that are alive in this world, for magical projection is an extremely difficult act, like that of the total transmission of life; and few beings are capable of accomplishing this mystery of the energetic transfusion of the «volt».

Children of love, more alive and fairer than the rest, are those conceived in the enthusiasm and passion of love; we have the proof, on contemplating the average human and run-of-the-mill works, that all that is produced in boredom and mediocrity engenders death. Only generously gifted artists unconsciously charge their works, which subsequently, and without rational explanation, cast a spell over certain observers more sensitive and receptive than the general mass of people.

Thus, stillborn humans and works of art naturally abound in the world through the encouragement of weakness and death, always on the increase since the initial fall.

These ghostly creations have only the appearance of life, without possessing its essence, but, as the ancient master said: «Let the dead bury their dead», for the absurdity of death is the only thing capable of truly making it repulsive to us.

Life is transmitted only by making love, be it through procreation, through producing works, or through praying, and where one does not make love, there is only caricature of life, boredom and death. [...]

The recent surprises provoked by the exhibitions of the works of children, of naive and primitive artists and of madmen are a fairly clear indication of the mysterious and magical origins of art. [...]

Our materialist position that leads us to consider only the appearances of the world, has led us also to absurdly exaggerate our anguish at the changing and renewal of all things. And we take as an end that which is only a beginning.

This attitude of Cartesian philosophers blinded by the outer crust of the world engenders scepticism, despair and the dissolution of modern societies that renounced their ancient faiths that have apparently become too simplistic and too infantile. [...]

The irrational study of ancient beliefs would probably lead us to confirm our gross ignorance of the problems concerning life and death.

The arrogant belief in our so-called civilization and in our pseudo-science unfortunately prevents us from considering the mystery of creation from the basic simplicity, whereby instinct combined with intuition would brilliantly replace our rampant reasoning reason.

For only «he who penetrates to the root knows all the fruits of the tree».

TRADITION

Anarchy is the division ad infinitum of knowledge and of the prime simplicity.

For painters, it is the dissipation and loss of craftsmen’s traditions and sources of inspiration, so that the part is confused with the whole.

Personality, on the other hand, can only appear in the work of art through the equilibrium of all the components, which requires a universality of mind and technical perfection.

In other words, originality is the exaggeration of a characteristic of being, whilst personality is the exaltation of all its powers. Originality is a gap; personality is an accomplishment.

French tapestry died long ago through trying to copy painting. Currently, French painting is in the process of dying through its desire to imitate tapestry.

PURPOSE

Painting, like the other arts, is also a means of discovering the worlds that revolve in us and around us, and to put in circulation a work of art is a sign of recognition intended to bring into communion individuals with identical culture and sensitivity.

The purpose of a work of art is thus to permit the average man to establish a relationship with the hidden essence of beings and things. Every work of art gains on being presented among objects that embellish the life of man.

Their accumulation in museums has no sense, and their multiple exhibitions seems like blasphemy, for the inane laughter of crowds always punishes the revelation of Art, as it formerly sanctioned the revelation of Man and of the God. [...]

One must sell to live, but that should never be the goal of artistic creation. Selling is only involved so as to permit the artist to persevere, and he who thus manages to eat, to have a home, and to keep warm and clothed should consider himself a privileged man among all others, for he is the only one who lives from work that is not a curse. The only one who lives like the saint, on pure prayer and praise, a condition granted to very few individuals in this world.

The artist is alone in fulfilling a gratuitous, and therefore divine function, alone in practising union with the surrounding creation, alone in seeking love and peace, alone in knowing the harmony of the worlds, perfect terror and perfect bliss.

ART AND SCIENCE

[...] The ancient Royal Art of the Sages was integration, love and life. Modern science is disintegration, sadness and death, and we are all dying through its diffusion in the world: dead medicines, dead food, poisoned air, water and earth, dead light, adulterated clothes and drinks, sinister housing, ugly objects, sadness and pain at the cankerous uniformity that levels out the human race. A Goncourt Academician, addressing the French elite, recently described today’s scholars as the successors of the mediaeval alchemists, thus confusing seekers of life with seekers of death, and displaying an ignorance quite unbecoming of the Academy.

In our modern societies, the scholar is commonly the extension of the criminal, for both destroy beings and things, so as to avail themselves of their concealed wealth. The common dagger becomes the atomic bomb; crime against the individual expands to crime against mankind. [...]

We recall the slogan coined for the average Frenchman, secular and obligatory: «Science shall save mankind». All the simple-minded ones have revelled in saying it before starting to die from it. On the other hand, nobody has yet said: «Art shall save mankind», which is nevertheless the only truth for the future.

«We are like the road sweepers of the world», said St Paul. He meant the living, the saints, the artists, the poets, who are like the flowers and the fruits ignored by mankind, and whose presence justifies all the mediocrity, all the self-importance, all the cowardice, all the rapes, all the crimes, all the stupidity, in a word, the dung heap where ordinary men mysteriously pass the time and germinate, for our lives are still lost in death, and the light of some is an insult to the darkness of the majority.

However, love and genius shall eventually prevail over the chaos whence they emerged under the impulse of fire, which lives in the prime essence, vehicle of the worlds.

TEACHING

[...] In modern societies, encouragement is given only to killers and to those who forge death; the arts survive only through the effect of speculation itself, canvassing indistinctly the beautiful and the ugly, the true and the false, the good and the bad. [...]

Knowledge and study of the great works of the past are essential to the cultural and technical education of the artist, but it is better to study and work alone than to suffer the emasculation of mediocre teaching. [...]

CULTURE

Culture adds to the initial gift and permits its complete development. [...]

Culture should never stifle sensitivity, and true knowledge should remain subjacent and discreet, like those underground layers of water that inexhaustibly feed Artesian wells. [...]

Culture should be an ornament, not an armour, a wealth and not a dead weight. It should assist in knowing what is above so as to unite it with what is below to produce the work. [...]

In art as in life, we always prefer a simple but sensitive man over a genius devoid of love. [...]

GIFT

The gift is like the sum of a special quest, accumulated during cycles of incarnate lives. It is inalienable.

Inspiration is like grace, moving and highly unstable. It can appear and disappear without any apparent reason. [...]

It is this gift, together with grace and love, and subsisting in the liberty of the interior being, that allows effortless communication with the sensitive and intelligent Universe that one calls God.

When the will tries to force expression and pride demands first place, one of which never goes without the other, sensitivity is amputated or destroyed, and talent caricaturized with great troubles and pains.

The devil also came out of God, but he lost grace and love through the ignorance of pride. [...] He sometimes plays the angel, sometimes the fool, so that everybody can applaud at least once. [...]

One never loses entirely the initial gift, it is grace instead that, abandoning the artist, makes the gift remain dormant or masked by the wish for isolation.

It needs only a sincere renunciation, a true gratuitousness, a breaking of the forces of the ego, for, grace circulating once again, the gift to reappear in all its stunning splendour. Thus, imagination and intelligence cannot be dissociated from grace and love, on pain of fragmented death.

The artist who tends unconsciously towards the divine absolute should conserve and reconcile in himself, for the sake of the work of creation, the attributes of divinity and the qualities of the God.

GENERATIONS

The artist endowed with true personality is only understood and encouraged by the men of his generation. He is ranked and honoured by subsequent generations, or brutally cut out if he has used trickery to please the mediocre people of his time.

The artist who remains himself should expect nothing of his elders, be they art lovers, dealers, critics, artists or literary hacks, for the expression of an era is recognized only by the men of the following generation. The more far-sighted the artist, the less he will be helped by his contemporaries, but the more he will be feted by later generations. [...]

EASINESS

It is typical of our times to confuse quality with quantity, power with violence, perfection with dryness, freshness with crudeness. [...]

We have been invaded by a frenzied and facile art, produced mainly to draw in the engrossed passer-by, the car driver, the robotic consumer, just like the peremptory advertising posters, from which one can no longer distinguish it. When you stop, it loses its appeal straight away, but if you move closer, you become aware of the emptiness of these works, always unfinished, and often not begun at all. [...]

MEDIOCRE PEOPLE

Mediocre people are, by definition, opposed to movement, to impulse, to life, for their spiritual poverty and their dryness of soul lead them to obstruct all that threatens to animate them. The lack of substance renders them faint-hearted, sad, miserly, hypocritical and cowardly.

They are the faithful guardians of acquired goods and situations, of ready-made morals, of dusty laws, of dead rites. They are the following sheep of political parties, the superstitious flocks of cults, the robots of darkness, the sterilizers of life, the harbingers of the reign of the Beast.

They bully and tire the living to death even in the name of the great precursors. They eliminate art in the name of art and try to obliterate God in the name of God. [...]

Having neither heart nor spirit, nor loyalty, they are for eternity the whitened sepulchres that already vomited Eliah artist, more commonly known by the name of Christ. Denying, rejecting or bringing down all that outshines them, they form the enormous mass of humanity’s spiritual idlers, whom no love shall ever warm up. [...]

All institutions degenerate and perish under the floodtide of the mediocre. [...]

CRITICS

We would simply like to recall that the essential function of critics is to analyze works of art, and they should in no case take it upon themselves to guide, still less to force, artistic expression, as is too often the case at the moment. [...]

Time restores things to their place, but the damage is already done, causing original artists to die in poverty, artists whose only error is not to bleat with the sheep around them. [...]

VOCATION

[...] Vocation must show itself to be irresistible, tenacious and confirmed by astrological and chirological tests that are easy to verify [...].

It would seem necessary for the rebuffs, the insults, the spittle and the blows to wash us, to soften us and to open us up until the abandonment of all being, so that the Universe appears to us brilliant and limpid.

«We have to become absent to ourselves in order to become present to the whole of creation».

We have to become empty so as to be filled up, malleable so as to be shaped, poor so as to be made rich, ignorant so as to be educated, foolish so as to become wise, wretched so as to be consoled, in the dark so as to be enlightened. [...]

TEST

[...] Sensitivity must be at the service of intelligence and be associated with it, for if the former provides the material, it is the latter that organizes it and that unravels the chaos.

Talent is therefore like the free exercise of these two qualities expressed through skill, that is, through the sum of experiences acquired and converted into reflexes. [...]

ASCESIS

It is only after having worked for a long time, struggled a long time in the apprenticeship of the craft, and suffered for a long time in the concentration of sensitivity that the artist can forget everything and, casting off all constraints and all reason, produce in the detachment one calls «inspiration».[...]

All those who do not possess within them the divine, creative, commanding and destructive fire of phenomenal worlds are stricken by impotence, and must borrow from the living the appearances of life or, what is wiser, give up trying to delude people. [...]

The artist works like others get drunk or take communion, unto delirium of the soul, unto creative madness, in the euphoria engendered by perfect liberty.

There, all caution, all calculation, all duties, all displays are wiped out by the spasm of life and death that diversifies creation.

There, one needs the audacity and recklessness of the madman, the gratuitousness of the pauper. [...]

One needs the patience of the earth. One also needs to be sufficiently intimate with oneself, sufficiently stripped bare to be able to show oneself naked without embarrassment. [...]

I always have feelings of commiseration and sadness when I see those vulgar fracas kicked up by students, for they all seem like chickens squealing before being plucked by life, which will turn them into decorated jugs, worn out prefects, intellectuals – musty, serious, prudent, moral – in a word, so mediocre.

Yes, little cardboard revolutionaries, shout, scream, kick up a rumpus, vomit with gusto and make people believe you are brave, witty, free, joyous and, above all, artists, for life will pluck you. [...]

If you have a genuine personality, it will burst through by itself; it is only worn out, empty ghosts who mimic the living. [...]

In sum, the essential goal of artistic ascesis is to safeguard the initial gift by leaving the grace to circulate freely within the limits of the most accomplished technique. [...]

SENSIBILITY

The sensitivity of the artist is the essential instrument of Art [...]; it often manifests itself in the artist through great emotionalism, shyness, susceptibility, imagination, intuition, clear-sightedness and a marked propensity for interior life. [...]

Artists get on well with women and understand them marvellously, for they share something of women’s moving nature, with masculine vigour besides. [...]

FERTILITY

[...] A minority work, meditate and pray in silence, seeking the secret of the gods amid the suffering and destitution. Those who accept this terrible initiation achieve glory, often posthumously. The majority founder on trying to force their natural talent, for the pursuit of worldly success leads to egocentrism, which wipes out love and liberty.

Fertility requires of the artist impeccable health and vitality, for painting is as exhausting as the act of love. All the weak ones therefore end up faking, plagiarizing, failing to finish, for painting not only empties the head and exhausts the heart, but also destroys the body. [...]

VISION

[...] Great artists generally work in a sort of fever that seizes them as soon as they begin working, through the effect of the excitement of a naturally elated state. [...]

Few artists get through these tests of deprivation successfully, and manage to conserve their vision intact. [...]

It is the law of the world that says that the strong manifest their strength in the midst of the greatest obstacles, and even beyond the frontiers of death, so that their faith be consolidated and justified before all, for it is better to perish with one’s faith than to vegetate in the dullness of doubt. [...]

ABANDONMENT

It can only occur usefully in the artist who has the natural gift of sensitivity. [...]

But abandonment only bears fruit after long periods of discipline, fertilizing periods of ascesis; there lies the divine secret of operative grace, love and knowledge. There is the royal path that leads to identification with the infinity of the Being. There is the submerging wealth, the inexhaustible prodigality, the plenitude of creative power, and the living experience of divine freedom and gratuity, for the nuptials of heaven and earth, like the union of the mystics, are not empty words.

Obviously, there can exist no trickery, no meanness, no restriction, no desire for violation or systematization in such behaviour. One needs unparalleled audacity to abandon oneself stripped bare in that way to the monstrous tide of shifting life. One needs an extraordinary faculty of gift, a unique and insane generosity. One has to be absolutely insane in the opinion of the common world of humans rooted to the limits of their skin. [...]

«Submerged by gifts, like a promised land sodden with innocence,
I give myself to him who unravels my night,
And my heart settles in repose, and shines».

(Poems of Resonance)

«The artist knows only
heaven and earth; the science,
the morals and the politics of
men bore him and kill him.»

THE MESSAGE REDISCOVERED

ENTHUSIASM

It is enthusiasm that allows the creation, that is the projection of exalted and magnified sentiment. [...]

Enthusiasm is found only in men endowed with great vitality. [...]

Enthusiasm bothers all the «dead», all the mediocre, for it collaborates with the undertakings of life. Enthusiasm is imagination and love in motion.

Thus, the accomplished artist is he who knows how to organize his frenzy and render it perceptible to all.

It is he who conserves enough creative imagination and love to find himself fulfilled while possessing nothing. It is he who is rejoiced at the appearances of the world, or who is sometimes saddened by them, but who never judges them.

SUGGESTION

The most beautiful book, the most pleasing painting, the most profound work of art, are not those that assert, but much rather those that suggest. It is in fact impossible to communicate a feeling of art other than through the suggestion that permits a personal and durable work of reconstitution. [...]

Only love, genius and saintliness are capable of drawing near to the universal mother, and it is enlightenment that allows them to rest in her. [...]

LIBERTY

Liberty of the mind and of the soul is essential to successful artistic capture and projection; it is the result of equilibrium of the faculties and functions of the being through internal union. One might say of the artist that he is liberated when he is delivered from the fear of wrongdoing and from the will to do good.

The artist must remain immutable amidst movement, free in the world, as the assistant of the God who creates the Universe. [...]

That is why we insist on the utility of the ascetic practice of detachment and self-oblivion, which is achieved through communication with the spiritual masters, and through daily meditation. [...]

Saintliness in fact possesses that extraordinary guard we call humility, and which is liberty won over the traps of worldly appearances. The saint does not take himself seriously, he does not take pride in things that do not belong to him, and nothing belongs to him down here, save the patience of the creature and the praising of the creator.

The true artist is he who has spat out the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; it is he who does well what he has to do and does not concern himself with the effect produced in others, even though he may have to die for his non-conformity with the view of those around him.

The artist explores life, loses himself in it and finds himself in it. In the true work of art, as in creation, there is no boredom, and that is the mark of their common divine origin. [...]

He will have to fight at all times to conserve the lack of constraint, the ease of improvisation, the imagination, the audacity and the joy that animate the work of art. [...]

The artist offers all he has so as to be possessed by nothing; he renews creation for his own pleasure; his madness resembles divine wisdom. [...]

He remains in contact through prayer with the spiritual masters who are dear to him, since he knows that inspiration comes from God through their ministry, and that is a secret known of very few. For few men know how to ask, just as few men know how to give or receive in love. [...]

«Liberty or death» for the artist more than for any other man; this formula is dangerously true all the days of his life, and even better, what should adorn the walls of his studio in capital letters is the inscription «gratuitousness or death», for art is liberty, love, gratuitousness, magic and life. [...]

MUSEUM

[...] Everything will be possible when the Fine Arts cease to be considered here as mere trivialities. [...]