what painters must learn to portray is not a thing, but the essence of a thing. When the artist paints a horse, it should not be one particular horse that you can recognize in the street. The camera can take photographs; we must go beyond that. What we must capture when we paint a horse, Monsieur Van Gogh, is Plato’s horsiness, the external spirit of a horse. And when we paint a man, it should not be the concierge, with a wart on the end of his nose, but manness, the spirit and essence of all men.
