The Collector (Vintage Classics)

by John Fowles

He said, it’s rather like your voice. You put up with your voice and speak with it because you haven’t any choice. But it’s what you say that counts. It’s what distinguishes all great art from the other kind. The technically accomplished buggers are two a penny in any period. Especially in this great age of universal education. He was sitting on his divan, talking at my back. I had to stare out of the window. I thought I was going to cry. He said, critics spiel away about technical accomplishment. Absolutely meaningless, that sort of jargon. Art’s cruel. You can get away with murder with words. But a picture is like a window straight through to your inmost heart. And all you’ve done here is build a lot of little windows on to a heart full of other fashionable artists’ paintings. He came and stood beside me and picked out one of the new abstracts I’d done at home. You’re saying something here about Nicholson or Pasmore. Not about yourself. You’re using a camera. Just as trompe-l’œil is mis-channelled photography, so is painting in someone else’s style. You’re photographing here. That’s all. I’ll never learn, I said. It’s to unlearn, he said. You’ve nearly finished the learning. The rest is luck. No, a little more than luck. Courage. Patience.