My entry into art was haphazard. Beyond the general presence of images of art in my home (reproductions of Gauguin, Matisse, and Picasso) and now-forgotten visits to museums at an early age, my first real encounters with art occurred at the movie theater, to which my parents would take me often . . .

I am stupid, I am ungifted, I am awkward, but I pray to you, tall spruces. I am quite awkward, I am… a coward. Yesterday, I was frightened of a man I don't respect. It's because of my cowardice that I can't learn to ride a bicycle. I haven't enough will power for anything, but I pray to you, tall spruces.

According to a young Courbet, whatever we encounter en masse today might just as well need to be considered a (neo-) Romanticism, waiting for its own Burial in order to explode the heteronomy of the given and the same in which we constantly entrench ourselves.