All artistic motivations are fleeting, except those that stem from the true recognition of the value of experience and the nobility of striving to represent it in a work that will remain when time consumes them. To be an artist, in short, is to have art as something that justifies a lifetime’s effort. This, it is true, usually only happens to those who, deeply affected, strip away their vanity to recognize in someone else the model of what they want to be: in a burst of humility, they turn gratitude into motivation.