A statement made by Picasso which was in an interview that appeared in Libero Nero in 1952. The Maestro said:
"In art the mass of people no longer seeks consolation and
exaltation but those who are refined, rich, unoccupied, who are
distillers of quintessences, seek what is new, strange, original,
extravagant, scandalous.
I myself since Cubism and before, have satisfied these masters and critics with the changing oddities which passed through my head and the less they understood me, the more they admired me! By amusing myself with all these games, with all these absurdities, puzzles, rabuses, arabesques, I became famous and that very quickly.
And fame for a painter means sales, fortune, riches. And today, as you know, I am celebrated, I am rich.
But when I am alone with myself, I have not the courage to think of myself as an artist in the great and ancient sense of the term. Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt were great painters.
I am only a public entertainer who has understood his times and exploited as best he could the imbecility, the vanity, the cupidity of his contemporaries. Mine is a bitter confession, more painful than it may appear, but it has the merit of being sincere."
