This conversation originally happened between Marius de Zayas and Pablo Picasso in 1923 and was first published in The Arts Magazine of New York in the same year. Although there are many translations of it, this one is my own. My translation is not a direct one, but one made in a way that I believe captures the tone of the original better than the ones I found.
I cannot understand the importance we place on the word research in relation to modern painting. To me, searching means nothing in painting—what matters is finding. No one is interested in following a man who spends his life with his eyes fixed on the ground, searching for a lost wallet that luck may place in his path. But whoever finds something, whatever that might be—whether they were looking for it or not—at least awakens our curiosity, if not our admiration.
Among the many sins of which I am accused, none is as false as the claim that the fundamental goal of my work is a spirit of research. When I paint, I aim to show what I have found, not what I am searching for. In art, intentions are not enough, and as we say in Spanish: obras son amores y no buenas razones [the road to hell is paved with good intentions[1]]. What matters is what we create, not what we intended to create.
We all know that art is not truth—it is a lie that allows us to see the truth, or at least a truth that it helps us understand. An artist must know how to convince others of the truth within his lies. If, through his work, he merely shows how he has searched and searched for a method to make others believe his lies, he will never accomplish anything.
The obsession with research has often led artists and their paintings astray in mental gymnastics. This may be modern art’s greatest flaw. The spirit of research has poisoned those who once grasped the clear and decisive essence of modern art, driving them to attempt to paint the invisible—which, by definition, cannot be painted.
People speak of naturalism as the antithesis of modern painting. I would love to know if anyone has ever seen a work of so-called natural art. Nature and art are, by definition, distinct concepts and therefore cannot be the same. Through art, we express our interpretation of what we believe nature to be. Velázquez left us his impression of the people of his time—who were, without a doubt, different from how he painted them. Yet we cannot conceive of Philip IV in any way other than how Velázquez depicted him. Rubens painted the same king, yet in his rendition, he appears as a completely different person. We trust Velázquez’s version because its greater force makes it more convincing.
From the earliest painters—those primitive peoples whose works differ vastly from nature—to artists who believed they were depicting nature as it truly is, such as David, Ingres, and even Bouguereau, art has always been art, not nature. From the perspective of art, there is no distinction between concrete and abstract forms—only forms that create more or less convincing lies. It is indisputable that such lies are necessary for our minds, for through them we shape our aesthetic perspective of life.
Cubism is no different from other schools of painting. The same principles and elements are shared by them all. The fact that cubism has been misunderstood for so long or that so many see nothing in it today means nothing. I cannot read in English; a book in that language is blank to me, but that does not mean the English language does not exist. And who should I blame but myself for not understanding something of which I comprehend nothing? I also often hear the word evolution. I am frequently asked to explain the evolution of my painting. To me, there is no past or future in art. If a work of art cannot endure forever in the present, it should be disregarded. Greek, Egyptian, or the art of great painters from other times is not the art of the past; it may be more alive now than in any other era. Art does not evolve on its own; ideas change, and with them, so do expressive forms. When I hear people speak of an artist’s evolution, it seems to me that they imagine him trapped between two parallel mirrors, each reflecting his image an infinite number of times. They consider the successive images in one mirror as the artist’s past and those in the other mirror as his future, while his real image is the artist’s present. Yet, it never occurs to them that they are all the same image, just in different planes.
Variation does not mean evolution. If an artist varies his method of expression, it only means that he has changed his mode of thinking, and this change can lead to either improvement or regression.
The various techniques I have employed in my art should not be seen as evolution or as stepping stones toward some unknown ideal in painting. Everything I have done in my life has been for the present, with a strong hope that it will always remain in the present. I have never thought about the spirit of research. When I have found something to express, I have done so without considering the past or the future. I do not believe I have used fundamentally different elements in my many approaches to painting.
If the subjects I wished to express suggested different methods, I never hesitated to adopt them. I have never conducted tests or experiments; whenever I have had something to say, I have done so in the modality I felt was most appropriate. Different motives require different methods of expression. This does not imply evolution or progress but rather an adaptation of the idea one wishes to express and the methods of said expression. There are periods in the chronology of art history that are more positive and complete than others. This means there are epochs with better artists than others. If art history could be represented graphically on a chart, like the ones used by nurses to record a patient's temperature changes, one would see the same mountainous profile, proving that there is no upward trajectory in art, but rather ups and downs that can occur at any moment. The same is true for the works of an individual artist.
Many believe that cubism is an art of transition, an experiment that will lead to many results. Those who believe this have misunderstood it. Cubism is neither seed nor fetus; it is an art that fundamentally deals with shapes. And when it creates a shape, that shape takes on its own life. A mineral substance with a geometric form does not adopt that shape with a transitory purpose; rather, it will continue being what it is and preserve its own form. If we applied the laws of evolution and transformation to art, we would have to admit that all art is transitory. Contrary to this, art does not partake in such philosophical absolutisms. If cubism is a transitional art, I am convinced that the only thing it will lead to is another type of cubism.
In the plight to simplify interpretations, cubism has been linked to mathematics, trigonometry, chemistry, psychoanalysis, music, and many other things. All of this has been pure fiction, if not nonsense, which has only brought bad results and, with its theories, obscured people’s vision.
Cubism has stayed within the limits and limitations of painting, never pretending to go beyond them. In cubism, drawing, composition, and color are practiced with the same spirit and the same methods that other schools understand and practice. It may be that our subjects are different, as we have introduced objects and shapes into paintings that were previously ignored. We have opened the eyes and minds of those around us.
We give shape and color all their individual meaning, as much as we are able; within our subjects, we find the joy of discovery and the pleasure of the unexpected. Our subject is, in and of itself, a strong source of interest. However, why explain what we do if all it takes to understand it is a willingness to see?
-Pablo Picasso, 1923
[1] The original translation makes little sense in English, but the expression the road to hell is paved with good intentions is the most in the spirit of the original. This is an addition an not in the original interview.