The idea of the specificity of pictorial technique is consistent only at the price of its assimilation to something quite different: the idea of the autonomy of art, of the exception of art from technical rationality. If it is necessary to show that you are using tubes of colour –and not simply to use them– it is in order to demonstrate two things: firstly, that this use of tubes of colour is nothing but the use of tubes of colour, only technique; and secondly, that it is something quite different from the use of tubes of colur, that it is art – i.e. anti-technique.