Paulo Reis /// CONVERSATION WITH JOSÉ BECHARA

If an artist’s quality is measured by Promethean effort, then José Bechara has achieved this status through his persistence and intelligence in transforming something empirical into acknowledged artistic skill. True intelligence is often known through its non-apparent qualities. The Austrian writer Robert Musil wrote, in his seminal novel The Man without Qualities, that “unfortunately there is nothing more difficult in literature than describing a man thinking. A great inventor, when he was asked how he managed to have so many new ideas, replied: “by thinking about them constantly”. Indeed, we may state tat unexpected ideas only come to us because we were already expecting them. They are largely the deserved fruit of character, of certain stable inclinations, of tenacious ambition and of tireless activity. How can such perseverance not be tiresome? Seen from another viewpoint, the solving of an intellectual problem is more or less like what happens when a dog wants to get through a narrow opening carrying a stick in its mouth; it moves its head from side to side until the bone gets through sideways; we do precisely the same, except the difference is we don’t rely on chance, we know more or less beforehand, due to a question of habit, how we should go about it. hings that are inside a brain...”.