Dull and Bathos

There are too many artists. When there are so many artists—all possible, all good—then nothing is good. The newest generation believes in good faith that their neo-Dadaism is more sublime than the art of Praxiteles. That’s the trouble with artists now. In my day we wanted to be outcasts, pariahs. No one cared about the artist. There was nothing about him in the newspaper. One kept working because one wanted to. In those days truly new discoveries were made. What we did was daring, risky. A young man had it hard in those days, he had no hope at all of selling anything. Now there is too much calculation behind every move. And the artists have such sublime egos! It’s repulsive. The great trouble with art at present is that there is no spirit of revolt—no new ideas appearing among the younger artists. They are following along the paths beaten out by their predecessors, trying to do better what their predecessors have already done … that’s what’s irritating, they can’t get away from it. I’m sure that when people like Seurat started to do something, they really just wiped the past right out. Even the fauves, even the cubists did it. It seems that today, more than any other time in this century, there are strong ties with the past. It lacks audacity, originality. It’s too dogmatic in the mind of these young people. They are not inventive or imaginative; they use all the ideas they have seen or heard about, use them again in dogmatic form, and probably write books about it. In my time we artists were pariahs, and we knew it and enjoyed it. They repeat and that is not good. To keep on doing the same thing is like being an old maid. A woman must be like a rose—always fresh in what she does. Furthermore, I did as few things as possible, which isn’t like the current attitude of making as much as you can, in order to make as much money as possible. But today the artist is integrated, and therefore he has to be paid, and therefore he has to continue to produce for the market. It’s a vicious circle. Now they’re integrated into society. They have country houses, two cars, three divorces and five children. An artist has to turn out lots of paintings to pay for all that, hmmm? Art is above all business, propaganda. That’s not my cup of tea.—M.D.