I am rereading my favorite book, Joyce Cary's "The Horse's Mouth", the third part of a trilogy about fictitious painter Gulley Jimson. I had to post two quotes.
First, when Gulley realizes his art needs to change:
"I could turn you out a picture, all correct in an afternoon...but it was just a piece of stuff. Like a nice sausage. Lovely forms. But I wasn't looking for any more than a sausage machine. I was the old school, the old Classic, the old church. I even sold some pictures...but one day I happened to see a Manet. Because some chaps were laughing at it. And it gave me the shock of my life. Like a flash of lightning. It skinned my eyes for me, and when I came out of it I was a different man. And I saw the world again, the world of color. By Gee and Jay, I said, I was dead and I didn't know it."
The second is when Gulley's buddy Planter tells a crowd that artist's are around to make the rest of us see the beauty in the world. Gulley responds:
“Well, what is art? Just self-indulgence. You give way to it. It's a vice. Prison is too good for artists- they ought to be rolled down Primrose Hill in a barrel full of broken bottles once a week and twice on public holidays, to teach them where they get off."
