Camus' Jonas, or The Artist at Work

 Three bits:

The apartment was on the second floor of what had been, in the eighteenth century, a private townhouse in an old quarter of the capital. Many artists lived in this part of the city, faithful to the principle that in art, the search for the new must be done within a framework of the old. Jonas, who shared this conviction, was delighted to be living in this quarter.

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The disciples explained to Jonas at length what he had painted, and why. Jonas thus discovered in his work many intentions that rather surprised him, and a host of things he had not put there.

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Until this period, Jonas was always secretly ashamed of his utter inability to judge a work of art. Exception was made for a handful of paintings that transported him, and for obviously crude scribblings, all of which seemed to him equally interesting and indifferent.