“I have now been exhibiting for almost fifteen years, and for the same fifteen years I have been hearing (although more rarely of late) that I have gone too far on my way; that in time my exaggerations will most surely decrease, and that I would yet paint in an ‘entirely different manner'; that I would ‘return to nature.’ I had to hear this for the first time when I exhibited my studies painted on the naturalist basis with the horn (spatula).
“The truth of the matter is that every really gifted artist, that is, an artist working under an impulse from within, must go in a way that in some mystical manner has been laid out for him from the very start. His life is nothing but the fulfillment of a task set for him (for him, not by himself). Meeting with enmity from the start, he feels only vaguely and indistinctly that he carries a message for the expression of which he must find a certain manner. This is the period of ‘storm and stress,’ then follow desperate searching, pain, great pain—until finally his eyes open and he says to himself, ‘There is my way.’ The rest of his life lies along this path. And one must follow it to the very last hour whether one wants to do so, or not. And no one must imagine that this is a Sunday afternoon’s walk, for which one selects the route at will. Neither is there any Sunday about it; it is a working day, in the strongest sense possible. And the greater the artist, the more one-sided is he in his work; true, he retains the ability to do ‘nice’ work of other kind (by reason of his ‘talent'), but innerly weighty, infinitely deep, and immeasurable serious things he can achieve only in his one-sided art. Talent is not an electric pocket lantern, the rays of which one may at will direct now hither and then thither; it is a star for which the path is being prescribed by the dear Lord.
“As far as I am concerned personally, I was as if thunderstruck, when for the first time and in only a general manner I began to see my way. I was awed. I deemed this inspiration to be a delusion, a ‘temptation.’
“You will easily understand what doubts I had to overcome, until I became convinced that I had to follow this way. Of course, I clearly understood what it means ‘to drop the objective.’ With what doubts I was troubled regarding my own powers! For I knew at once what powers were absolutely required for this task. How this inner development proceeded, how everything pushed me on to this way and how the exterior development slowly but logically (step by step) followed suit, you will see from my book that is to appear shortly (in English). All that I still see ahead of me, all these tasks, the ever-increasing wealth of possibilities, the ever-growing depth of painting I cannot describe. And one must and may not describe such things: they must mature innerly in secret confinement and may not be expressed otherwise than by the painter’s art.
“If in time you acquire the ability to more exactly live my pictures, you will have to admit that the element of ‘chance’ is very rarely met with in these pictures, and that it is more than amply covered by the large positive sides—so amply, indeed, that it is not worth while to mention those weak spots.
“My constructive forms, although outwardly appearing indistinct, are in fact rigidly fixed as if they were cut in stone.
“These explanations lead us too far; they could help only if illustrated by examples. Also, this letter is already much longer than it ought to be. I trust that I have expressed myself clearly! These things are so infinitely complicated,
VLAMINCK
Village