A retrospective exhibition may present a view of an entire life with causes and effects at all levels: To the artist it may afford an accounting; and to her or his public it offers an opportunity to come as close as possible to the intention and what the artist represents. Perhaps that is the most importantly thing to be gained from facing an artwork along with the surrender to it, which Matisse thought was “like sinking into an armchair.”

Yet again, there is another consideration, which is to observe the strangely contorted path from the tender beginnings down to the last, and hopefully, better results. This applies, not only in my own case, which is probably one of the worst, but in general. The most essential task is to try to guess the motive behind the sometimes zig-zag course.

On several occasions, I have voiced my criticism of what is deceitful, flimflammery and fraudulent about elite art, with which I think it is necessary to settle accounts, as has been said. And now, and here, this time around, I am going to try to point out the elite culture’s wholly perverse lack of solidarity with the society that it lives in, and even lives off, not to mention sponges off. Or to be entirely precise, elite art is an inflamed and stinking cancer injury inside this society, and this surely cannot be expressed any more vigorously. What we have here is a sunshine-filled Sunday morning, with classical music on the radio. Quietly and calmly, I have chosen this phraseology and I have chosen to write in such a manner that now, the ship has to be turned around in the water. 

Now the course has to be charted out again and restructured, but not in such a way that the head needs to be chopped off by anybody at all, and not that anything at all needs to be thrown away, but in such a way that the focusing is moved, as I expressed this at one time, to a somewhat more practical and especially a slightly more useful corner within the sphere of possibilities.   

And how can it be that things have gone so wrong? How can artistic life become so far removed from usefulness or merely common sense? My long labour in this field has provided me with many possible interpretations of this unfortunate situation. We may take our point of departure with van Gogh who is universally recognized as a brilliant artist, in all ways wonderful. While we recognize all these merits without reservation, he still had a weakness, as I now think of it, because in his great and excellent work he came to downgrade carefulness for the sake of tenderness. If we close our eyes and think of his representations of old boot, footstools, unshaven faced, cornfields etc. then they are models of the natural on all levels and they contain great sensitivity, unusual for that period. But perhaps in order to achieve this, the traditional great care with the representation of objects, the thorough workmanship, have been neglected a bit, but only a little bit, for Vincent van Gogh is incredible, without a doubt.

Time passes. Many stand on van Gogh’s shoulders, still many more stand on their shoulders – somewhat cowardly, I shall refrain from mentioning names – but things progress. Where van Gogh was incredible and sensitive and deviated slightly from the norms, which was very exciting, he was followed by some who were incredibly sensitive and still more deviating, which was even more exciting. This goes tearing along as the next generation turns out to be fabulously, incredibly sensitive and still more deviating, and this can seemingly go on forever. The price – for this costs something – is a loss of other qualities each time. First, carefulness was discarded, and subsequently bit by bit, thorough study, verisimilitude and beauty.  Long before van Gogh, communication with direct appeal had been lost. This has caused ordinary people (a shameful word) to quit, indeed, they quit a long time ago, because it is uninteresting to them.