Creativity Quote by Francis Picabia

Picabia drags the whole etiquette of “dignified rebuttal” into the gutter and makes the gutter the point. “My arse contemplates those who talk behind my back” is a one-line Dada performance: contempt delivered as anatomy, reflection outsourced to the body part most associated with waste and insult. The joke lands because it’s engineered as a reversal. Backbiters imagine they’re operating in shadow, but Picabia literally positions them where they belong in the social hierarchy of attention: behind him, beneath him, addressed by the least polite face of the self.

The verb “contemplates” is the trapdoor. It’s not “ignores,” not even “despises.” It’s mock-philosophical, a high-register word paired with low-register subject matter, turning the speaker into a grotesque Enlightenment thinker whose seat of reason has slid south. That friction is classic Picabia: he loved sabotaging seriousness, especially the kind that calcifies into art-world piety.

Context matters. Picabia moved through Cubism, Dada, and the broader avant-garde ecosystem where reputation, manifestos, and rivalries were practically mediums of their own. This line reads as a preemptive strike against critics and peers who police taste from the sidelines. Rather than defend himself on their terms, he makes critique look like gossip and makes gossip look like what it is: noise that doesn’t merit a face-to-face.

It’s also a statement about authorship. If the “self” can be reduced to an arse with opinions, then the aura around the artist can be punctured at will. The insult isn’t just for his detractors; it’s a pin to the balloon of cultural authority itself.