It is, of course, a luxury to create art and, on top of this, to insist on expressing one's own artistic opinion. Nothing is more luxurious than this… - Max Beckmann

The metaphysics of substance. The strange feeling which comes over us when we sense: this is skin – this is bone – all in a single vision that is completely unearthly. The dreaminess of our existence mixed at the same time with the indescribably sweet illusion of reality.

My first informed impression, and what I would like to achieve, I can perhaps only realize when I am impelled as in a vision. One of my figures, perhaps one from the Temptation, sang his strange song to me one night – ..We are playing hide-and-seek, we are playing hide-and-seek across a thousand seas, we gods.. ..when the skies are red in the middle of the night, when the skies are red at night. You cannot see us, you cannot see us but you are ourselves.. ..that is what makes us laugh so gaily.. .Stars are our eyes and nebulae our beards.. ..we have people's souls for our hearts. We hide ourselves and you cannot see us, which is just what we want.

The laws of art are eternal and don't change at all, as the moral laws don't change in human beings. [arguing with Franz Marc who demanded in 'Der Blaue Reiter' circa 1912 a new modern art, in relation to its own - changing - time].