Thomas Schlesser

“La peinture, censément un art de l'espace, se fait expression du temps qui file”
― Thomas Schlesser

“collector at the time called Charles Ephrussi had commissioned Manet to paint a picture of an entire bundle of asparagus. The artist named his price at eight hundred francs. That might seem derisory compared with the millions just one of Manet’s paintings would be worth today, but it was a far from negligible sum. The average pay for a day’s work at that time was around five francs. Anyhow, Charles Ephrussi was so happy with the painting (now in a museum in Germany) that he sent a thousand francs to Manet! And the artist, with wit, ingenuity, and generosity, painted this extra asparagus on a separate canvas and gave it to the collector, along with the following note: ‘There was one missing from your bundle.’ Manet is urging us to see that there’s basically very little to see. It’s a simple asparagus, or a banal bit of table, and it’s a small burst of generosity that made him create a painting from it and give it away. But this painting tells us that life’s charm lies precisely in the almost nothing; if that almost nothing is present, life brightens up. Without these almost nothings that we overlook, things would only be what they appear to be. But with just a certain something, they suddenly become delightful. ‘Less is more,’ as the English say, with perfect brevity.”
― Thomas Schlesser, Mona's Eyes: A Novel