Читать книгу Cubists and Post-Impressionism онлайн

58 страница из 70

“His combative disposition impelled him to fight against painters, critics, dealers, buyers, and against established institutions and conventions. One would say fate pursued him. In 1894 at Concarneau in a quarrel with some boatmen who had insulted him, his ankle was broken by a sabot kick, leaving a painful injury from which he suffered until his death (in 1903).”[21]

Of his aims he said in a letter to a friend:

Physics, chemistry, and, above all, the study of nature, have produced an epoch of confusion in art, and it may be truly said that artists, robbed of all their savagery, have wandered into all kinds of paths in search of the productive element which they no longer possess. They now act only in disorderly groups, and are terrified as if lost when they find themselves alone. Solitude is not to be recommended to any one, for a man must have strength to bear it alone. All I have learnt from others has been an impediment to me. It is true that I know little, but what I do know is my own.