Alliance (Hands)

“It seems to me that the right of the artist to deviate from nature cannot be contested. It was not only in our time, but it was also probably in all times, the tendency of artists to produce a work of art independently of realism, independently of what one really sees. To use his imagination, his phantasy, is certainly the right of an artist, and, admitting this, one must not forget, for instance, that Bruegel’s paintings are also not nature, – they are real imagination.” (Arnold Schönberg, Round-Table on Modern Art, 1949)