After attending a disappointing free dance recital at the Carter Barron amphitheatre in Rock Creek Park featuring pretentious wannabe Twyla Tharp-types who seemed to have program descriptions written for NEA grants (the only good group was a troupe of students who looked like they ranged in age from 7-27 from a DC tap-dancing school) this quote from Picasso leaped out of David Caute's
The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War:
Only the Russians are naive enough to think that an artist can fit into society. That's because they don't know what an artist is...Even Mayakovsky committed suicide. There is absolute opposition between the creator and the state...People reach the status of artist only after crossing the maximum number of barriers. So the arts should be discouraged, not encouraged.
More on David Caute here.