…The tradition of militia paintings that you so carefully broke was a true and honest tradition, where the participants can say, “Look, we are being painted. Look, we understand that we are being watched, and we’re looking straight at you, into your eyes, at you, to prove it. We are not real, we are in a painting.” That’s what they understood, and that is what they wanted. You have spoiled all that for them, Rembrandt. You have tried to pretend that these are real people. They didn’t want that, didn’t want it at all. In your painting, they hustle and bustle about doing real things – loading muskets, giving commands, drum, run, and bark – when all they wanted was to stand still and be looked at. “Here is me, here I am in my splendid uniform as an important member of this important club. I look at you, you look at me. I’m watching you and you’re watching me.” But you have pretended that the people in your painting are not being watched. Which is the definition of an actor? An actor is a person who has been trained to pretend he is not being watched. So all the people in your paintings are all actors, not real people at all. Yet you have got them to do things which are real. Except, of course – because you knew what you were doing – of your little portrait of yourself. You knew you were being watched, and you look at us, within the old tradition of these sort of paintings, with admirable self-consciousness. You’re giving yourself an old-fashioned position and responsibility in a new-fashioned painting which tries to deny that position and responsibility. Your painting, Rembrandt, is a pretence, a fakery, a cheat, a dishonesty, full of impossible contradictions, unworthy of a truly intelligent man. They, of course, knew that they were being painted, and you knew that they were being painted, but what do you acknowledge? Neither. Why pretend? Apart from all the other infelicities that demonstrate you did not fulfill the task asked of you, your painting, Rembrandt, is dishonest. So much so, that this is not a painting at all. By its very nature, it denies being a painting. It is a work of the theatre!
