To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano.
James WhistlerArt should be independent of all clap-trap - should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism and the like. All these have no kind of concern with it; and that is why I insist on calling my works 'arrangements' and 'harmonies.
James Whistler