The Creation of the World. A tapestry by Fernand Leger at the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum

What is the artist to do, crushed by the grandiose mise-en-scène of life, to attract his public? There is only one option open to him: to raise himself to the level of beauty by considering everything around him as raw material, to choose in the whirlwind that swirls before his eyes the available plastic and pictorial values, interpret them spectacularly, achieve unity and dominate at all costs. If he doesn’t learn enough, if he doesn’t achieve the upper level, he immediately finds himself trapped by life, which cuts him down to standard size and leaves him behind. To invent, that is the goal, no matter what the cost1