Showing posts with label Jules Pascin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jules Pascin. Show all posts

Context is everything

"Every great artistic movement is founded on a limited number of very young individuals who meet and feel this great desire to work together. It's very hard to be a great artist in isolation. I have an image in mind to describe this: you see a photograph of the Café Select in 1937. The place is packed, and there's a little "x" over one gentleman, with "Pascin" written by it. The others must also be artists, but they're unknown and most likely died in poverty. Yet if it hadn't been for them, there wouldn't have been Pascin. For an artist to do something, he or she must be surrounded by a whole compost of people. I don't think someone can exist without this compost. Maybe in literature, but not in painting. In my case, the crucial period, which stretches from 1969 to 1973, was completely made up of encounters, friendships, projects in common."
The Possible Life of Christian Boltanski, Catherine Grenier [pg 52, 53]