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.

Cubism was an attack on the perspective that had been known and used for 500 years. It was the first big big change. It confused people: they said 'Things don't look like that!'