Art Is A Lie That

What Do You Think An Artist Is? An Imbecile Who Has Only His Eyes If He's A Painter, Or Ears If He's A Musician, Or A Lyre At Every Level Of His Heart If He's A Poet, Or Even, If He's A Boxer, Just His Muscles? On The Contrary, He's At The Same Time A Political Being, Constantly Alive To Heart-rending, Burning, Or Happy Events In The World.

Painting Is Stronger Than Me, It Makes Me Do It's Bidding.

To Finish A Work? To Finish A Picture? What Nonsense! To Finish It Means To Be Through With It, To Kill It, To Rid It Of Its Soul, To Give It Its Final Blow The Coup De Grace For The Painter As Well As For The Picture.

In One Way Or Another, I Always Marked My Pictures. But There Were Times When I Put My Signature On The Back Of The Canvas. All My Works From The Cubist Period, Until About 1914, Have My Name And The Date On The Back Side Of The Stretcher. I Know Someone Spread The Story That In Céret, Braque And I Decided Not To Sign Our Pictures Anymore. But That's Just A Legend!

Formerly Pictures Used To Move Towards Completion In Progressive Stages. Each Day Would Bring Something New. A Picture Was A Sum Of Additions. With Me, Picture Is A Sum Of Destructions. I Do A Picture, Then I Destroy It. But In The Long Run Nothing Is Lost; The Red That I Took Away From One Place Turns Up Somewhere Else.