Quote by Amédée Ozenfant

"Accustomed to judge painting by what it imitated, the public vociferated or split its sides, in front of canvases in which it could recognize nothing : wonderful discussions took place in the Press, and the most asinine views were exchanged. The astonished public was unable to recognise the extraordinary talent to which these surfaces, painting in so remarkably novel a manner, bore witness : or that, solely as a result of form and colour in no wise representational, unprejudiced minds could derive very real gratification from them".

I have been reading Ozenfant's Foundations of Modern Art on which I hope to include a brief discussion in my dissertation. Although I will be primarily looking at the images included in the text, he does nonetheless come up with these brilliant and wonderfully modern statements, which I can't help but smile at! Here is he talking about the reception of works by Cézanne, who he designates as the forefather of Cubism (which he also suggests could alternatively be called "Super-Cézannism"), Picasso, Braque, and Derain.