Essentially, perspective is a form of abstraction. It simplifies the relationship between eye, brain and object. It is an ideal view, imagined as being seen by a one-eyed, motionless person who is clearly detached from what he sees. It makes a God of the spectator, who becomes the person on whom the whole world converges, the Unmoved Onlooker.

The hallmark of the minor artist is to be obsessed with style as an end in itself.

Political stress is always apt to shrink the private arena and attach it on to the public

I have never been against new art as such; some of it is good, much is crap, most is somewhere in between.

Nevertheless, what was made in the hope of transforming the world need not be rejected because it failed to do so – otherwise, one would also have to throw out a good deal of the greatest painting and poetry of the nineteenth century. An objective political failure can still work as a model of intellectual affirmation or dissent.

No art goes unmediated by other art.

The desire to be primitive was very much a function of fin-de-siècle imperialism; it appealed to strong egos and domineering minds.