paul qwest /

He was a professor for a few years before devoting himself to his own collection while continuing to give courses and lectures on the history of art and philosophy of art. He now devotes himself exclusively to setting up exhibitions throughout the world which is consistent with its cosmopolitan culture..

He considers philosophy as an art of thought, just as literature is an art of writing and identity as the art of scaffolding..

ironic portrait

My basic character, whatever anyone may say, is that of the mountebank.

In my chilhood and my youth I was wildly in love with the stage.

I should perhaps have been a great actor if I had happened to be born poover.

Even now, what I love above all else, id form,

provided it be beautifull and nothing beyond it.

(…) 

I admire tinsel as much as gold:

Indeed, the poetry of tinsel is even greater, because it is sadder.

The only things that exist for me in the world are spendid poetry, harmonious, well-turned,

singing sentences, beautiful sunsets, moonlight, pictures, ancient sculpture, and strongly marked faces.

Beyond that, Nothing.

I am as sorry caged birds as for enslaved human being.

In all of politics, there is only one thing that I understand: the riot.

I am as fatalistic as a Turc, and Believe than whether we do everything we can for progress of humanity, or Nothing at all, makes no whit of difference. As for that "progress", I have but an obtuse comprehension of muddy ideas. I am completely out of patience with everything pertaining to that kind of language.

I am above all a man of fantasy, caprice, lack of method.

Gustave Flaubert 

extracts from a letter to Louise Colet - 1846