Picasso wrote with glittering illumination, “We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth—at least the truth that is given us to understand. . . . People speak of naturalism’s being in opposition to modern painting. I would like to know if anyone has ever seen a natural work of art. Nature and art, being two different things, cannot be the same thing. Through art we express our conception of what nature is not. . . . The fact that for a long time Cubism has not been understood, and that even today there are people who cannot see anything in it, means nothing. I do not read English—an English book is a blank book to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist, and why should I blame anybody but myself if I cannot understand what I know nothing about?”
*Interview given to a Spanish reporter and published in translation in The Arts, in New York, 1923
“In the old days, pictures advanced toward their completion by stages. Every day brought something new. A picture used to be a sum of additions. In my case, a picture is a sum of destructions. I make a picture—then I destroy it. . . . A picture is not thought out and settled beforehand. While it is being done, it changes as one’s thoughts change. And when it is finished, it still goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it. . . . A picture lives only through the person who is looking at it. . . . There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward, you can remove all the traces of reality; the danger is past in any case, because the idea of the object has left its ineffaceable mark. . . . Academic training in beauty is a sham. . . . When we love a woman, we don’t start measuring her limbs. . . . Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of birds? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But where art is concerned people [think they] must understand.”
*Interview published in the noted Cahiers d’Art, 1935