If we [artists] think of ourselves as special creators, we are wrong. Everyone creates in the same way as we do. They invent,...

If we [artists] think of ourselves as special creators, we are wrong. Everyone creates in the same way as we do. They invent, imagine, hope, dream, frighten themselves, remember, observe – and from all this they make for themselves certain ideas and images, some expressible, some inexpressible. Where we’re different from most people is the way we try to destroy these ideas and images. We hit at them, strike them, do our utmost to kill them. We often succeed – the image falls away, lifeless, at last recognizable as a lie or a cliché. Just occasionally there is one that withstands our beating. It won’t die. The more we beat it, the stronger and harder it becomes. It becomes indestructible. We have made a work of art – we, creators, whose job is to destroy the tentative, the halfconscious, the merely evocative. The strongest metal is tempered by successive heating and cooling. All can heat – as a result of the great, marvellous warmth of men. Our privilege, if that is what it can be called, is that we can also cool – with the terrible coldness of our discipline

__