Most people do not understand the things they meet with nor do they know when they have learned, but they seem to themselves to do so ... What sense or thought do they have? They follow the popular singers and they take the crowd as their teacher.
- Heraclitus (c. 500 BCE)
Living only for the moment, turning our full attention to the pleasures of the moon, the snow, the cherry blossom, and the maple leaves; singing songs, drinking wine, diverting ourselves in just floating, floating; caring not a whit for the pauperism staring us in the face, refusing to be disheartened, like a gourd floating along with the current: this is what we call the floating world.
- Asai Ryoi (1661)
(NB: Ukiyo-e = paintings from the floating, ephemeral world.)
[Paintings and drawings] are not mere imitations of nature but the graphic expression of thought, the translation into forms of philosophy.
- Balthus
What I am doing, as I have always done, is to paint for myself, and my work will never appeal to everybody. I feel a profound disgust for what might be called the pictorial gossip that now constitutes the critic/artist relationship; what we do is never understood, only praised or censured.
- Francis Picabia
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