with hidden noise

“—Was it you I saw this afternoon? a little while ago?

—Me? Why? Where?

—Were you there, where they’re showing Picasso’s new . . .

—Night Fishing in Antibes, yes, yes . . .

—Why didn’t you speak to us?

—Speak to who? You? Were you there?

—I was there, with a friend. You could have spoken to us, Wyatt, you didn’t have to pretend that . . . I was out with someone who . . .

—Who? I didn’t see them, I didn’t see you, I mean.

—You looked right at us. I’d already said, There’s my husband, we were near the door and you were bobbing . . .

—Listen . . .

—You went right past us going out.

—Look, I didn’t see you. Listen, that painting, I was looking at the painting. Do you see what this was like, Esther? seeing it?

—I saw it.

—Yes but, when I saw it, it was one of those moments of reality, of near-recognition of reality. I’d been . . . I’ve been worn out in this piece of work, and when I finished it I was free, free all of a sudden out in the world. In the street everything was unfamiliar, everything and everyone I saw was unreal, I felt like I was going to lose my balance out there, this feeling was getting all knotted up inside me and I went in there just to stop for a minute. And then I saw this thing. When I saw it all of a sudden everything was freed into one recognition, really freed into reality that we never see, you never see it. You don’t see it in paintings because most of the time you can’t see beyond a painting. Most paintings, the instant you see them they become familiar, and then it’s too late. Listen, do you see what I mean?

—As Don said about Picasso . . . she commenced.

—That’s why people can’t keep looking at Picasso and expect to get anything out of his paintings, and people, no wonder so many people laugh at him. You can’t see them any time, just any time, because you can’t see freely very often, hardly ever, maybe seven times in a life.

—I wish, she said, —I wish . . .”

(Gaddis, The Recognitions, pp. 91–92.)

“. . . . Soon you won’t see anyone but artists in the street and the one thing you’ll have no end of trouble in finding is a man. They are everywhere: the cafés are full of them, new art schools open up every single day. I’ve always wondered how a teacher of painting, unless he teaches a locksmith how to copy keys, has ever been able to find a single pupil since the beginning of the world. People make fun of those who frequent palm-readers and other fortune tellers and never indulge in any irony about the simple souls who go to art school. Can anyone learn to draw or paint, to have talent or genius? And yet we find in these studios big dadoes of thirty or even forty and God forgive me, ninnies of fifty, yes, sweet Jesus! poor old fogies of fifty . . . .

It may be argued that art schools provide painters with heat in winter and a model. And for a true painter a model is life itself. At any rater you can judge for yourself whether a professional model is more alive than the plaster statues people copy in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts; but the frequenters of the Academie Matisse are full of contempt for the pompous deadheads at the Beaux-Arts; why, just imagine: they are turning out advanced art. It is true that some among them believe that art is superior to nature. Yes, my dear!

I am astonished that some crook has not had the idea of opening a writing school.”

(Arthur Cravan, “Exhibition at the Independents” (1914). Reprinted in Robert Motherwell’s The Dada Painters & Poets: An Anthology, p. 4. Translated by Motherwell, I assume.)