Thursday, January 27, 2011

"For me, however, the greatest pleasure is to overcome some difficulty, to find or invent something while I work. I begin by posing myself a problem. But I don't wish merely to solve this problem. While I solve it, I want to find something else, I want to stumble across something that prods me into unknown territory. Out of boredom or the need to entertain myself, I end up discovering something that gives me pleasure.
This kind of work seems to develop me, to educate me, while painting landscapes is another matter entirely. There I enter into a much more sensual state of the soul, in which I have the satisfaction of finding exactly what I already know. Many painters surrender themselves to this sensual pleasure- it allows them to duplicate the things they already know, and they think it's a marvel that all these creations are ultimately recognizable as their own work.
It's a little bit like fairy tales, which end exactly the same way they did the last time we heard them."
Saul Steinberg