The religions never wanted an art where you paint only what you see.

There's something peculiar about artists. They have ups and downs... After a while everything you do is just wonderful... then you slide back. If you're a good artist you're going to go down. And then it's up to you.

If there's no unity in your work, then you've deliberately made yourself into that kind of person. You don't want that unity in your work. You've made some kind of satisfactory arrangement with your culture.

Your culture demands that you bring some kind of crisis to your work and therefore you can not bring any unity to it. In order to bring crisis into your work you have to bring it to a state of expectancy. In other words you have to leave your work in the state of mind of being a question.

I'd fallen asleep thinking I was much too tired to go on working and if I went on working, I'd lose it. I'd get a better hold of it in the morning; feel stronger. But I looked and looked at it and it seemed to me there was nothing to do.

Nothing in the world excites the culture today so much as a question. A question seems very appropriate to whatever you have in mind. Allowing your work to remain questionable is a way of satisfying your cultural condition.

As soon as you set yourself up in the position of transferring paint from one place to another, your whole culture invades you. It tells you all about the history of art.