"In art ... those who are refined, rich, unoccupied, who are distillers of quintessence, seek what is new, strange, original, extravagant, scandalous. I, myself, since Cubism and before, have satisfied these masters and critics with all 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, rebuses, arabesques, I became famous, and that very quickly. And fame, for a painter, means sales, gains, 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."
Pablo Picasso 1952
