The surrealists and the modern movement in painting as a whole seemed to offer a key to the strange postwar world with its threat of nuclear war. The dislocations and ambiguities in cubism and abstract art as well as the surrealists reminded me of my childhood in Shanghai.

A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.

In the revolt against idealism the ambiguities of the word experience have been perceived with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word.