Hokusai vs Monet: should a painter chase the wave or the light?

I gave the sea a single, terrible instant—one great claw of foam, and Fuji small and eternal behind it. That is form.

But the sea never holds still, my friend! I painted my lilies again and again because the light of ten o'clock is a stranger to the light of noon.

You chase the light until the shape vanishes; I chase the line until the world stands revealed. At ninety I still hoped to draw a dot that was truly alive.

And I would trade that perfect line for the trembling of dawn on the pond—for I do not paint the thing, Hokusai, I paint the air between us and it.