Andre Breton (1896 – 1966)
French writer, poet and theorist of Surrealism.
I say that the eye is not open when it is limited to the passive role of a mirror – even if the water of that mirror offers some interesting peculiarities… …that eye impresses me as no less dead than the eye of a slaughtered steer if it has only the capacity to reflect – what if it reflects the object in one or in many aspects, in repose or in motion, in waking or in dream? The treasure of the eye is elsewhere! Most artists are still for tuning around the hands of the clock… …without having the slightest concern for the spring hidden in the opaque case. The eye-spring… …Arshile Gorky – for me the first painter to whom the secret have been completely revealed.
In the world we live in everything militates in favor of things that have not yet happened, of things that will never happen again.
Of all those arts in which the wise excel, Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.
To see, to hear, means nothing. To recognize (or not to recognize) means everything. Between what I do recognize and what I do not recognize there stands myself. And what I do not recognize I shall continue not to recognize.