in no other culture is the difference between ‘masterpiece’ and average work so large as in the tradition of the oil painting.

This great artist is a man whose life-time is consumed by struggle: partly against material circumstances, partly against incomprehension, partly against himself.

Images were first made to conjure up the appearances of something that was absent. Gradually it became evident that an image could outlast what it represented; it then showed how something or somebody had once looked – and thus by implication how the subject had once been seen by other people. Later still the specific vision of the image-maker was

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

By refusing to enter a conspiracy, one remains innocent of that conspiracy. But to remain innocent may also be to remain ignorant.

the publicity image steals her love of herself as she is, and offers it back to her for the price of the product.

The purpose of publicity is to make the spectator marginally dissatisfied with his present way of life.

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

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