Excerpt from Art and Social Life, trans. A. Fineberg. reprinted in Art in Theory: 1900-2000. ed. Harrison and Wood pp. 154-158
“Complete indifference to the idea content of their works was already displayed by the impressionists. One of them very aptly expressed the conviction of them all when he said” ‘The chief dramatis persona in a picture is light.’ But the sensation of light is only a sensation – that is, it is not yet emotion, and not yet thought. An artist who confines his attention to the realm of sensations is indifferent to emotion and thought.” p. 155
“Idea is not somethign that exists independently of the real world. A man’s stock of ideas is determined and enriched by his relations with that world. And he whose relations with that world are such that he considers his ego the ‘only reality,’ inevitably becomes an out-and-out pauper in the matter of ideas. Not only is he bereft of ideas, but – and this is the chief point – he is not in a position to conceive any. An just as people, when they have no break, eat dockweed, so when they have no clear ideas they content themselves with vague hints at ideas, with surrogates borrowed from mysticism, symbolism and the similar ‘isms’ characteristic of the period of decadence. in brief, we find in painting a repetition of what we have seen in literature: realism decays because of its inherent vacuity and idealistic reaction triumphs.” p. 156