a lie

self-portrait - 1901

Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth

Everyone wants to understand painting. 

Why don’t they try to understand the song of the birds?

 Why do they love a night, a flower, 

everything which surrounds man, 

without attempting to understand them? 

 

Whereas where painting is concerned, they want to understand. 

Let them understand above all that the artist works from necessity; 

that he, too, is a minute element of the world

 to whom one should ascribe no more importance 

than so many things in nature which charm us 

but which we do not explain to ourselves.

 

 Those who attempt to explain a picture 

are on the wrong track most of the time.

~ Pablo Picasso

Boisgeloup, winter 1934