quote
The art of painting, as I conceive of it, consists in representing through pictorial technique the unforeseen images that might appear to me at certain moments, whether my eyes are open or shut.
It would not be difficult to hit upon some ignored activity in my brain and charge it with having been responsible for determining the content of what I call an "unforeseen image". References to unconscious activity satisfy, if you wish, the persistent habit of explanation. But we get no enrichment from a thing explained. In effect, the thing explained drops out of sight in favor of the practical explanation itself or a more or less intelligent hypothesis.
I very readily avoid explaining the things I love. I am incapable of believing in the necessity of an unconscious activity that reduces consciousness to the manifestation of a superficial mechanism. For my part, I find rather comic the seriousness of specialists and victims of the "unconscious". How can one avoid seeing the ridiculousness of that illustrious writer (whose name I cannot recall) who saw fit to advise those interested when he went to bed by solemnly inscribing on the door of his bedroom, "Poet at work".
Certain images are the models for the paintings that I like to paint. In my opinion, nothing other than images should be represented in painting. I have no desire, therefore, to express ideas or sentiments through painting, even if they seem to me extraordinary; not even those that pretend to originate in a so-called unconscious.
The titles of my paintings accompany them in the way that names correspond to objects, without either illustrating or explaining them.
The art of painting, like many things, can give rise to confusions, simple or difficult: notably, the art called "fan¬tastic", which sometimes appears charming and attractive but more often sordid and puerile by choice. Its false reputation describes it as being capable of discovering or imagining a privileged world that purports to be – if one listens to the adepts of the "fantastic" – truer than the world itself.
As I conceive of it, the art of painting is neither easy nor difficult. I know that at certain moments unforeseen images appear to me and that they are the models of the pictures I like to paint.
These images seem to me to dominate my ideas and my feelings, good or bad.
They truly dominate them if they reveal the present as an absolute mystery.
end of quote
RENÉ MAGRITTE, 1957
Para Mr. e Mrs. Barnet Hodes
* bolds meus
ALL I NEED
Radiohead
I'm the next act
Waiting in the wings
I'm an animal
Trapped in your hot car
I am all the days
That you choose to ignore
You are all I need
You are all I need
I'm in the middle of your picture
Lying in the reeds
I'm a moth
Who just wants to share your light
I'm just an insect
Trying to get out of the night
(...)