*Surely due to my Christian belief, I am totally indifferent to society's seductions, the notorious personality cult that the modern world imposes on artists.  The Desert Fathers, apostles who should be our guiding lights, promulgated renunciation, an extreme bareness that permits me to reach my interior vision, what I really am.
-Balthus




*Modern painting hasn't really understood that painting's sublime, ultimate purpose-if it has one-is to be the tool or passageway to answering the world's most daunting questions that haven't been fathomed.  The Great Book of the Universe remains impenetrable and painting is one of its possible keys.  That's why it is indubitably religious, and therefore spiritual.
-Balthus