Creativity Quote by Francis Picabia

A slap in the face to the cult of utility, Picabia's line turns bourgeois common sense inside out: if something is truly "indispensable", it is precisely the thing no spreadsheet can justify. Coming from a Dada-adjacent artist who treated good taste like a piñata, the sentence lands as both prank and manifesto. It sounds like an aphorism you'd stitch on a pillow, then immediately regret - which is part of its point.

The intent is to sabotage the era's pieties about progress, function, and seriousness. In the early 20th century, when machines promised efficiency and modernism often preached purity of purpose, Picabia argues that the human essentials are the ones that look pointless to a rational system: play, pleasure, idleness, art, flirtation, nonsense. "Useless" becomes a coded defense of autonomy. If it's not performing for industry, nation, or respectability, it can belong to you.

The subtext has teeth. Calling something "indispensable" usually sanctifies it - work, duty, productivity. Picabia reroutes that sanctification toward what society treats as expendable. It's also a jab at art's need to justify itself. Instead of pleading that art is useful (morally uplifting, economically catalytic, good for your brain), he embraces its alleged wastefulness as the very reason it matters.

Contextually, it's a Dada-era refusal of wartime logic: when "useful" knowledge builds weapons and propaganda, maybe the only honest necessity is what can't be conscripted.