Every artist would like to communicate, but often he fails to ask himself with whom he is trying to do it. - Ben Shahn

There is a cliché that the artist is the person who best reflects his time. I am not ready to accept that definition of the artist, nor the idea that the art is best which best reflects its time. The function of the artist is a little more than to reflect; he has to refract, to set things off in another direction.

I have always held a notion of a healthy society as one in which the two opposing elements, the conservative and the creative (or radical, or visionary, or whatever term is best applied to the dissident), exist in a mutual balance. The conservative, with its vested interest in things as they are, holds onto the present, gives stability, and preserves established values (and keeps the banks open). The visionary, always able to see the configuration of the future in present things, presses for change, experiment, the venture into new ways. A truly creative artist is inevitably of this part of the society.

Whoever would know his day or would capture its essential character must maintain such a degree of detachment.