My dear ***, I f I have said this all to you before, forgive me for repeating myself. These words have been with me for years, because they will have been a beacon to me, and will no doubt have defined a requirement —they are essential (to me). For all this time I have kept a slip of paper, folded in two, in my wallet. In forty years, the onion skin paper has become a bit weathered, torn, and held together with tape. I had typed a few sentences by Paul Eluard on it: “I am not of those who try to lose their way, to forget themselves, by loving nothing at all, by cutting down their needs, their tastes, their wishes, and by lead‑ ing their lives, that is to say life, towards the loathsome conclusion of their deaths. I am not willing to subject the world to myself by the mere virtual power of understanding, I want ev‑ erything to be tangible, real, useful to me, because it is the basis on which I can con‑ ceive my existence. A man can only be in his own reality. Otherwise, he only appears to others as dead, as a stone or as a piece of trash.” This is how Eluard began a text that he wrote about Picasso’s painting. At times I would only read it every now and again. At times I felt that I had to read over it quite often. Regardless, I always come back to it when I discover a piece of art, and after having gazed at it for a long time, surprised, confounded, lost, what else? A bit wor‑ ried perhaps, my only certainty being that I understand nothing of it at all; I have to ensure myself that what I am looking at is “tangible, real, useful” I did not have to reread Eluard’s words in Olga de Amaral’s studio. Be‑ cause what she showed me was obvious. And necessary. The surfaces spread out in front of me were what they should have been. And they were nothing else than what they had to be. It was “it”. And “it” could only be “it”. The word “surface” that I have chosen to use may disturb you... What other word could I use? They are not canvases... Not paintings either. Nor are they tapestries, a word that would relegate this piece of art to who knows what basement or attic where, ob‑ solete and out of style, it would belong to nothing else but dust. Let us agree that I stick to “surface” for lack of a better word. At least this lets me attempt to give an (imperfect) description of what it is: irregular, unbal‑ anced and rough, uneven as much as fluid and undulat‑ ing. At least this word allows me to invite you to see for yourself that the light seems to scrape the surface, and graze it in one place, then in others to burst forth and sparkle... Unlike on any other material, unlike on any other “surface”. What can I do if this ordinary word is the only one that can describe what is incomparable in this artwork? All the more incomparable that it remains detached from any manifesto or any theory in order to be singular. The acrobats, authors of these theories and mani‑ festos that have always been around, which has not prevented them from becoming increasingly numerous over the last few decades, should have read Epictetus’s Discourses. Book III, Chapter XXI, to be precise, entitled To those who undertake the profession of teacher with a light heart. They would have found this sentence: “The carpenter does not come and say, Hear me dis‑ course on carpentry, but he undertakes a contract and builds a house and so shows that he has acquired the art.” Olga de Amaral never talked about the art of carpentry with anybody. What she assembles, weaves and sets up creates a trap in which the regard becomes aware of its own power and of what it is (perhaps), of its 5 Letter to *** regarding Olga de Amaral