Hundertwasser's comment on the work

My exclusive contract with Galerie Kamer stipulated that I was to hand in seventy points per month, for which I got 70,000 (old) francs (700 francs after revaluation). The point system for keeping tabs on pictures was customary between dealers and painters at that time. Dealers bought not according to quality, but area. They would say, such-and-such a painter is worth so-and-so many points. This system of measurement and calculation had been adapted from the makers of wedged stretchers and canvasses. The bigger the picture the more points it had per unit of area, i. e., a picture double the size of another did not have twice the amount of points, but about half again as many. Moreover, there were formats: figure (these were the widest), paysage (less wide), marine (the slenderest). A marine had the same number of points as an equally tall figure. So a lazy painter who sold to dealers by the point system only needed to paint marines, since then there would be less area to paint. To paint seventy points I either had to paint a lot of small pictures or one big one, but its area would be about twice as big as the combined area of the small ones. Obviously, this system is not conducive to producing quality. The point quota had to be met. If quality could not be maintained, the painter was eliminated and replaced by another. After all, there were 60,000 painters in Paris who declared painting as their occupation. When I went to renew my residency permit and told a civil servant at the Prefecture that I had a contract with a gallery, she got very angry because so many French painters were out of work. That was when I realised that I "counted"; at Facchetti's I hadn't got anything. (from: Hundertwasser 1928-2000, Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. 2, Taschen, Cologne, 2002, p. 336)