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4th November 1944 
11

Abstraction is realism, but abstractionists fit their work into their categories, and make it intellectualized expression. There are many modern isms, but they are all very conscious effort. I am told that I am romanticist, but I never think about it. Historians attached the old masters to one school or another, but never as much as was seen in the Nineteenth Century. Eastern art has been defined much more clearly into schools. and taught by formulae. Really, I believe it is almost impossible to classify great painters of the Renaissance or any other great epoch into any one particular school. The impressionists painted their most interesting and important pictures when they were moving into their ideas. Those works are almost impossible to name by what school they belong to. Like dawn, when the sun breaks into the sky, anything might happen - mysteries, drama. As they grow older everything becomes ordinary. Although they may have achieved what they were looking for when twelve o'clock bursts with blue, from then on they sink with repetition.

Naturally, painters analyse their work from one day to another, as life goes on, never trying to fit their work into any category, but painting good pictures. Whatever school the result of his work may belong to should not be a matter of the artist's concern. His expression of inner feeling and belief covers extreme hight, and if it should achieve greatness, well, that should be his goal.