Essays on Painting

When writing essay
I checked the original of a quote
attributed to Louis Hourticq by Thomas Bodkin only to discover that it
was actually made by Jean Laran & George le Bas. I could have made a far
more serious error over a strangely convincing piece given as a quote known
as the “Picasso Confession.”
14
“In art, the mass of the people no longer seek consolation and
exultation; but those who are refined, rich, unoccupied, who are
distillers of quintessences, seek what is new, strange, original,
extravagant, scandalous. I myself, since cubism and even before,
have satisfied these masters and committees, with all the oddities
which passed through my head and the less they understood me,
the more they admired me. By amusing myself with these games, I
became famous, and that very quickly. And fame for a painter
means sales, gains, fortune, riches. And today as you know, I am
celebrated, I am rich. But when I am alone by myself, I have not
the urge to think of myself as an artist in the great and ancient
sense of the term. Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt. Goya, were great
painters. I am only a public entertainer who has understood his
times and has exhausted the best he could the imbecility, the
vanity, the cupidity of his contemporaries. Mine is a bitter confession,
more painful than it may appear, but it has the merit of being
sincere.”
Playing Field, University of York
Picasso, quoted in mirage
of africa by Alan
Houghton Broderick
I was relieved to read the
following on line as a result
of an investigation reported
a
t
http://quoteinvestigator.com
/2016/09/08/entertainer/
“The well-known “Confession”
was invented by