#69

“Gauguin? He defeated his own end – indifference – by taking the positive step of setting fire to his pictures. If he really had been freed from his ego, he would have seen no need, have felt no desire, to destroy his art. His method of communication – was destruction. His ego-pleasure was in the beau geste, the vicarious pleasure of destruction, the big defiance, the completely self-conscious – and self-defeating attitude of indifference. His greatest work of art was his attitude – and that he reasonlessly carried to an extreme and corruption by burning his pictures. He thought he freed himself from the ego and suprerego. He merely expressed it in a different from” (id, 81).