(Men in seventeenth-century Holland wore their hats on the side of their heads in order to be thought of as adventurous and pleasure-loving.

Publicity persuades us of such a transformation by showing us people who have apparently been transformed and are, as a result, enviable.

By contrast, a woman’s presence expresses her own attitude to herself,

to whom does the meaning of the art of the past properly belong?

Every exceptional work was the result of a prolonged successful struggle.

It proposes to each of us that we transform ourselves, or our lives, by buying something more. This more, it proposes, will make us in some way richer – even though we will be poorer by having spent our money.

It recognizes nothing except the power to acquire.

When the camera reproduces a painting, it destroys the uniqueness of its image. As a result its meaning changes. Or, more exactly, its meaning multiplies and fragments into many meanings.

Adriaen Brouwer was the only exceptional ‘genre’ painter.