Matisse On Art: I wanted to inscribea spiritual space; that is, a space whose dimensions are not limited even

by the existence of the objects represented. I never left the object. The object is interesting in itself. It's the environment which creates the object. Thus I have worked all my life before the same objects which continued to give me the force of reality by engaging my spirit towards everything that these objects had gone through for me and with me. A glass of water with a flower is different from a glass of water and a lemon. The object is an actor: a good actor can have a part in ten different pays; an object can play a different role in ten different pictures. The object is not taken alone, it evokes and ensemble of elements. The table I painted isolated in the garden... well, it was representative of a whole open-air atmosphere in which I had lived. The object must act powerfully on the imagination; the artist's feeling expressing itself throught the object must make the object worthy of interest: it says only what it is made to say. On a painted surface I render space to the sense of sight: I make of it a colour limited by a drawing. When I use paint, I have a feeling of quantity - surface of color which is necessary to me, and I modify its contour in order to determine my feeling clearly in a definitive way. (Let's call the first action 'to paint' and the second 'to draw.) In my case, to paint and to draw are one. I choose my quantity of coloured surface and I make it conform to my feeling of the drawing, like the sculptor moulds clay by modifying the ball which he first made and afterwards elicits his feeling from it 'Vermillion doesn't do everything' said Othon Friesz with bitterness. Neither must colour simply 'clothe' the form: it must constitute it. One must study an object a long time to know what its sign is. Yet in a composition the object becomes a new sign which helpt to maintain the force of the whole. In a word, each work of art is a collection of signs invented during the picture's execution to suit the needs of their position. Taken out of the composition for which they were created, these signs have no further use. The sign for which I forge an image has no value if it doesn't harmonize with other signs which I must dtermine in the course of my invention and which are completely peculiar to it. The sign is determined at the moment I use it and for the object of which it must form a part. For this reason I cannot dtermine in advance signs which never change, and which would be like writing: that would paralyse the freedom of my invention. A drawing is a painting made with reduced means. On a white surface, a sheet of paper, with pen and ink, you can, by creating certain contrasts, create volumes; by changing the quality of the paper you can give supple surfaces, bright surfaces, hard surfaces, without, however, using either shading or highlights For me, drawing is a painting made with reduced means, which can be totally absorbing, which can very well release the feelings of the artist just as much as the painter. The expression is carried by the whole picture. Arms, legs, all the lines act like parts of an orchestra, a register, movements, different pitches. If you put in eyes, ose, mouth, it doesn't serve for much; on the contrary, doing so paralyzes the imagination of the spectator and obliges him to see a specific person, a certain resemblance, and so on, whereas if you paint lines, values, forces, the spectator's soul becomes involved in the maze of these multiple elements..and so, his imagination is freed from all limits.