1943 I think about Morandi painting on top of a hill surrounded by fascism, I think about Picabia finding inspiration in soft-porn magazines on the Côte d'Azur, I think about Marinetti returning sick from the Russian Front, I think about Duchamp playing chess in his New York apartment, I think about Ronald Searle POW in the Kwai jungle, I think about Ensor playing the harmonium during the bombardment of Ostend, I think about Otto Dix watching his works being destroyed by the Nazis, I think about Beckmann under siege in Amsterdam, I think about Dalí, Ernst and Breton reunited in their New York exile, I think about Magritte painting Fantômas stepping over Paris, I think about Mondrian painting Broadway Boogie Woogie, I think about Derain much courted by the Nazis in Paris, I think about Tatlin observing bird flight from his garden in Moscow, I think about Beuys flying his Stuka dive-bomber over Crimea, I think about de Chirico copying his paintings in a corner of his studio, I think about Matisse "painting with scissors" on the French Riviera, I think about Soutine dying from an ulcer in Paris while escaping Gestapo, I think about Grosz repudiating his past from his new home in Long Island, I think about Lee Miller photographing English women driving tractors, I think about Kandinsky in the suburbs of Paris ceasing to write, I think about Paul Nash once again a war artist for the British Army, I think about Leni Riefenstahl filming Tiefland with extras from concentration camps, I think about Schlemmer forbidden to paint and dying in a hospital in Baden-Baden I think about Picasso making a sculpture out of a bicycle in occupied Paris, I think about Hannah Höch painting the Totentanz triptych in Nazi Germany, I think about Camille Claudel dying forgotten in the asylum of Montdevergues, I think about Siqueiros publishing In War, Art of War from his Cuban exile, I think about Emil Nolde painting "unpainted pictures" in Seebüll, I think about Schwitters learning from Norway that his Merzbau had been destroyed, I think about Cartier-Bresson escaping from a German labor camp, I think about Felix Nussbaum hiding from his neighbours in Etterbeek, I think about Blinky Palermo born in the rubble of Leipzig.