"Although I am no longer a Surrealist in the strict sense of the word, much of my work relates to Surrealism because of its emphasis on convulsion, and the unexpected. This does not interfere with my liking direct portraiture, landscape etc, but the intensity of vision which is paramount with Surrealism, its ambition to create reality rather than simply describe it, appeal to me. The conditions of the 20^th century, the chaos, the inhumanity, the perpetual paroxysm of war demand an apocalyptic art and so I part company with those who discover significance in abstraction or the superficialities of pop art. Now we live in the presence of the epigones of modern art. What was revolutionary in the achievements of the 20^th century art has been tamed and even reduced to the infantile. There is no artistic opposition only an interminable mediocrity and what was understood as painting and drawing has vanished. The new mediocrity is as presumptuous in its claims as the old academics.

 The can be no deep relationship between what is now acceptable and the art of the near or distant past. But I firmly believe that art has a future in another epoch and to that time I make my appeal."

John Melville 1967

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