Art Is a Fruit

     
     Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit on a plant, or a
child in its mother's womb.  But whereas the fruit of the plant, the
fruit of the animal, the fruit in the mother's womb, assume autonomous
and natural forms, art, the spiritual fruit of man, usually shows an
absurd resemblance to the aspect of something else.  Only in our own
epoch have painting and sculpture been liberated from the aspect of a
mandolin, a president in a Prince Albert, a battle, a landscape.  
I love nature, but not its substitutes.  Naturalist illusionist art
is a substitute for nature.
     I remember a discussion with Mondrian in which he distinguished
between art and nature, saying that art is artificial and nature
natural.  I do not share his opinion.  I believe that nature is not
in opposition to art.  Art is of natural origin and is sublimated
and spiritualized through the sublimation of man.

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