Famous Quotes
"When you grow older, it dawns on you that you are yourself--that your job is not to force yourself into a style, but to do what you want. I saw that if I would accept subjects, I could paint with more absorption, with a certain enthusiasm for the subject which would allow some of the esthetic qualities such as color and composition to evolve more naturally. With subjects, the difference is that I feel a natural development of the painting rather than a formal, self-conscious one." David Park
"Every masterpiece has a hidden structure which supports every inch of the painting surface. Like our bodies, the bones are the hidden structure. Like a building, the steel or wood frame holds every inch of the building together." David Friend
"Art tends towards balance, order, judgment of relative values, the laws of growth, the economy of living—very good things for anyone to be interested in."
Robert Henri
"There is a species of emotion particular to painting. There is an effect that results from a certain arrangement of colors, of lights, of shadows, etc. It is this that one calls the music of painting."
Vuillard
"Great Realism consists of many elements- the abstract, the physical, the literary, the poetic, the metaphysical, the psychological."
Raphael Soyer
"A good painting is a remarkable feat of organization. Every part of it is wonderful in itself because it seems so alive in its share in the making of the unity of the whole, and the whole is so definitely one thing….
You can look at a painting in but one way. That is, the way it is made. Whether you will or not, you must follow its sequences….
There are some paintings, very remarkable for the skill they display, which are, however, a mere welding together of factors which belong to many different expressions of nature? Many a school drawing of this character have I seen held up as an example, given a prize, and yet being but a mere patching together of many concepts—unrelated factors, nevertheless cunningly interwoven? There is not in them that surge of life, that unity which is the mark of true organization." Robert Henri
“Remember, the picture is to be one concerted movement in a definite direction for a definite purpose, the expression of a definite thought. All its building is for that thought, the bringing into expression and the clothing it.” Emily Carr
“Cherish your own emotions and never undervalue them.” Robert Henri
“It is not enough to have thought great things before doing the work. The brush stroke at the moment of contact carries inevitably the exact state of being of the artist at the exact moment into the work, and there it is, to be seen and read by those who can read such signs, and to be read later by the artist himself, with perhaps some surprise, as a revelation of himself.”
Robert Henri
“Don’t try to paint good landscapes. Try to paint canvases that will show how interesting landscape looks to you, your pleasure in the thing.”
Robert Henri
“The eye must be alert; must see the influence of one thing on another and bring all things into relation.”
Robert Henri
“Art does not reproduce the visible but makes things visible.” Klee
“A painting is like a closed book that becomes an open book. It always needs to be decoded and opened up. Then it shows itself, though it doesn’t explain itself. Paintings that can go the distance are like this. They are not graphic, so they don’t give everything up at a glance, but they give enough to provoke you to open them up.”
Sean Scully
“The power of a painting has to come from the inside out, not the outside in. It’s not just an image; it’s an image with a body, and that body has to contain its spirit. A painting, really, is made by its reason for being there. What’s behind it decides everything. It’s not just a question of attractiveness or correctness; it can’t be fixed afterwards or by additions. How it starts will define how it ends. So, it’s the weight of the intention that defines everything.”
Sean Scully
“A painting is the embodiment of human action and feeling and thought…. Painting is the things itself, irreducible and irreplaceable. It is a moment in a body, a thought and a feeling embodied - and thus, original”
Sean Scully
“I do not want to see how skillful you are. I am not interested in your skill. What do you get out of nature? Why do you paint this subject? What is life to you? What reasons and what principles have you found? What are your deductions? What projections have you made? What excitement, what pleasure do you get out of it? Your skill is the thing of least interest to me.”
Robert Henri
“Do not try to paint extraordinary things but do ordinary things with intensity. Push your ideas to the limit, distorting if necessary to drive the point home and intensify it, but stick to one central idea, getting it across at all costs. Have a central idea in any picture and let all else in the picture lead up to that one thought or idea. Find the leading rhythm and the dominant style or predominating form.”
Emily Carr
"Nothing is less real than realism? Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of things."
-Georgia O'keefe
"The important thing is to remember what most impressed you and to put it on canvas as fast as possible. Then, using only one color as a basis, you structure the entire painting around it. Color represents a logic that is just as unrelenting as the logic of form. One must never let go before having managed to set down one's first impressions."
-Pierre Bonnard
"The big artist does not sit down monkey-like and copy,...but he keeps a sharp eye on Nature and steals her tools. He learns what she does with light, the big tool, and then color, then form, and appropriates them to his own use....But if he ever thinks he can sail another fashion from Nature or make a better-shaped boat, he'll capsize."
-Thomas Eakins
"So I am always between two currents of thought, first the material difficulties, turning round and round and round to make a living; and second, the study of color. I am always in hope of making a discovery there, to express the love of two lovers by a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones. To express the thought of a brow by the radiance of a light tone against a somber background."
-Vincent Van Gogh
"All the sentiment of a work of art comes unconsciously, or nearly so, from the state of the artistís soul. I am seeking a painting definition of that simple work nature."
-Denis
"The stronger the motive back of a line the stronger and therefore the more beautiful, the line will be. The object of painting is not to make a picture, this is a by-product,. The object behind every true work of art is the attainment of a state of being, a more than ordinary moment of existence. These results, however crude, become dear to the artist who made them because they are records of states of being which he has enjoyed and which he would regain."
-Robert Henri
"To achieve progress nature alone counts, and the eye is trained through contact with her. Do not be an art critic, but paint; therein lies salvation."
-Cezanne
"Let everything about you breathe the calm and peace of the soul. Do not finish your work too much. Though it were a ruby, fling it far from you. It is better to paint from memory, for thus your work will be your own; your sensation, your intelligence, and your soul will triumph over the eye of the amateur. Go from dark to light , light to dark."
-Gauguin
"I have noticed that whatever is finished at one sitting is fresher, better drawn, and profits from many lucky accidents. I see, too, how meticulously one must follow nature, and not be satisfied with a hasty sketch. How often, looking at my drawings, have I been sorry that I hadn't had the energy to spend half an hour more on them. The first two things to study are form and values. For me, these are the bases of what is serious in art. Color and Finnish put charm into one's work. Always keep in mind the mass, the ensemble which has struck you. Never lose sight of that first impression by which you were moved. Begin by determining your composition. Then the values- the relation of the forms to the values. I am never in a hurry to reach details. First and above all I am interested in the large masses and the general character of a picture; when these are well established, then I try for subtleties of form and color. I rework the picture constantly and freely, and without any systematic method. Be guided by feeling alone. We are only simple mortals, subject to error; so listen to the advice of others, but follow only what you understand and can unite in your own felling. Be firm, be meek, but follow your own convictions. When one follows another, one is always behind. I am seeing a certain place. While I strive for a conscientious imitation, I yet never for an instant lose the emotion that has taken hold of me. Reality is one part of art; feeling completes it. Before any site or any object, abandon yourself to your first impression. If you have really been touched, you will convey to others the sincerity of your emotion."
-Corot
"Genius is not a possession of the limited few, but exists in some degree in everyone. Where there is natural growth, a full and free play of faculties, genius will manifest itself. The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable. Don't worry about your originality. You couldn't get rid of it even if you wanted to. It will stick with you and show up for better or worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do. Good composition is like a suspension bridge - each line adds strength and takes none away. I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living."
-Hans Hofmann
"The question for me is whether or not something moves me and engages me. If I am moved and engaged by something, I find it beautiful. For me the term beautiful is not pejorative, it is always affirmative. If I say I find it very convincing, even though it is ugly, the fact it is done with such authenticity and conviction and it is finally persuasive, it becomes beautiful. In other words, I don't think beauty is simply a question of appearances. It can come out left field and redefine itself. It can be something you've never seen before, or it can be something you think you have seen before, like my work, that presents itself with another life.
I can be convinced by a painting by Lucian Freud and very unconvinced by a painting by Eric Fischl, but they are both kind of expressionistic figurative paintings. One has a kind of force behind it, a moral fury, and a resistance I find interesting. The other is just full of acquiescence and complicity. Even though they look superficially similar, they have an entirely different effect on me. I can say the same thing about many abstract painters.
Well, a lot of these people learned their lesson from Andy Warhol. Andy Warhol is not an artist whose work I like. In a sense, Andy Warhol was the visual artist equivalent of the method actor who becomes the subject. I do the same thing. My work is based on immersion. I am immersed in a very different set of parameters and aspirations. I am taking on the history of art, I'm immersed in it and I'm immersed in what I make. I am what I make in other words; there is no difference. He was the same way, but he was really a television ad, or a billboard. He had as much depth as a billboard. To talk about him as a profound person is ridiculous.
It might be argued, however, that Warhol was profound in his emptiness and he was profoundly attached to something in the culture that drives out all content and all hope. He was profoundly attached to the dehumanization of the culture and embraced it and really became a part of it. He is like a blinking sign that says nothing except I want to be famous. The emptiness of it is stunning. It is that emptiness and the slickness of it that has appealed to so many other artists who followed him."
-Sean Scully
Paul Cezanne Quotes
+ The Louvre is the book in which we learn to read.
+ It took me 40 years to find out that painting is not sculpture.
+ Don't be an art critic, but paint, there lies salvation.
+ What is one to think of those fools who tell one that the artist is always subordinate to nature? Art is in harmony parallel with nature.
+ A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.
+ All my life I have worked to be able to earn my living, but I thought that one could do good painting without attracting attention to one's private life. Certainly, an artist wishes to raise himself intellectually as much as possible, but the man must remain obscure. The pleasure must be found in the work.
Arshile Gorky Quotes
Drawing is the basis of art. A bad painter cannot draw. But one who draws well can always paint.
Art must always remain earnest... Art must be serious, no sarcasm, comedy. One does not laugh at a loved one.
If Picasso drips, I drip... For a long while I was with Cezanne, and now I am with Picasso.
My recollections of Armenia open new visions for me. My art is therefore a growth art where forms, pines, shapes, memories of Armenia germinate, breathe, expand and contract, multiply and thereby create new paths for exploration.
If a painting of mine suits me, it is right. If it does not please me, I care not if all the great masters should approve it or the dealers buy it. They would be wrong.
I seek a form or language which will express my ideas for our time.
Abstraction allows man to see with his mind what he cannot physically see with his eyes... Abstract art enables the artist to perceive beyond the tangible, to extract the infinite out of the finite. It is the emancipation of the mind. It is an explosion into unknown areas.
Hans Hofmann Quotes
"Painters must speak through paint, not through word."
"Every art expression is rooted fundamentally in the personality and temperament of the artis."
"A teacher affects eternity: he can never tell where his influence stop."
"The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may spea."
"It makes no difference whether a work is naturalistic or abstract; every visual expression follows the same fundamental law."
"My aim in painting is to create pulsating, luminous, and open surfaces that emanate a mystic light, in accordance with my deepest insight into the experience of life and nature."
"To worship the product and ignore its development leads to dilettantism and reaction. Art cannot result from sophisticated, frivolous, or superficial effects."
"Being inexhaustible, life and nature are a constant stimulus for a creative mind."
"Art is magic... But how is it magic? In its metaphysical development? Or does some final transformation culminate in a magic reality? In truth, the latter is impossible without the former. If creation is not magic, the outcome cannot be magic."
"When the impulses which stir us to profound emotion are integrated with the medium of expression, every interview of the soul may become art. This is contingent upon mastery of the medium."
"In nature, light creates the color. In the picture, color creates the light."
"An idea can only be materialized with the help of a medium of expression, the inherent qualities of which must be surely sensed and understood in order to become the carrier of an idea."
"Just as counterpoint and harmony follow their own laws, and differ in rhythm and movement, both formal tensions and color tensions have a development of their own in accordance with the inherent laws from which they are separately derived. Both, however, aim toward the realization of the same image. And both deal with the depth problem."
"Creation is dominated by three absolutely different factors: First, nature, which works upon us by its laws; second, the artist, who creates a spiritual contact with nature and his materials; third, the medium of expression through which the artist translates his inner world."
"The art of pictorial creation is so complicated – it is so astronomical in its possibilities of relation and combination that it would take an act of super-human concentration to explain the final realization."
"Color is a plastic means of creating intervals... color harmonics produced by special relationships, or tensions. We differentiate now between formal tensions and color tensions, just as we differentiate in music between counterpoint and harmony."
"The whole world, as we experience it visually, comes to us through the mystic realm of color. Our entire being is nourished by it. This mystic quality of color should likewise find expression in a work of art."
"Colors must fit together as pieces in a puzzle or cogs in a wheel."
"A work of art is a world in itself reflecting senses and emotions of the artist's world."
"What goes on in abstract art is the proclaiming of aesthetic principles... It is in our own time that we have become aware of pure aesthetic considerations? Art never can be imitation."
Henri Matisse Quotes
+ Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul.
+ A rapid rendering of a landscape represents only one moment of its existence. I prefer, by insisting upon its essential character, to risk losing charm in order to gain greater stability.
+ Seek the strongest color effect possible.. the content is of no importance.
+ After a half-century of hard work and reflection the wall is still there.
+ Truth and reality in art do not arise until you no longer understand what you are doing and are capable of but nevertheless sense a power that grows in proportion to your resistance.
+ I have simply wished to assert the reasoned and independent feeling of my own individuality within a total knowledge of tradition.
+ The portrait is one of the most curious art forms. It demands special qualities in the artist, and an almost total kinship with the model.
+ Cezanne, you see, is a sort of God of painting.
+ I have always tried to hide my own efforts and wished my works to have the lightness and joyousness of a springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labours it cost.
+ I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me.
+ I am unable to make any distinction between the feeling I get from life and the way I translate that feeling into painting.
+ An artist must possess Nature. He must identify himself with her rhythm, by efforts that will prepare the mastery which will later enable him to express himself in his own language.
+ A young painter who cannot liberate himself from the influence of past generations is digging his own grave.
+ Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.
+ Creativity takes courage.
+ What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter.
+ It is my dream to create an art which is filled with balance, purity and calmness, freed from a subject matter that is disconcerting or too attention-seeking. In my paintings, I wish to create a spiritual remedy, similar to a comfortable armchair which provides rest from physical expectation for the spiritually working, the businessman as well as the artist.
+ . . I have always sought to be understood and, while I was taken to task by critics or colleagues, I thought they were right, assuming I had not been clear enough to be understood. This assumption allowed me to work my whole life without hatred and even without bitterness toward criticism, regardless of its source. I counted solely on the clarity of expression of my work to gain my ends. Hatred, rancor, and the spirit of vengeance are useless baggage to the artist. His road is difficult enough for him to cleanse his soul of everything which could make it more so.
Jackson Pollock Quotes
Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you.
Abstract art should be enjoyed just as music is enjoyed – after a while you may like it or you may not.
I don't use the accident. I deny the accident.
There is no accident, just as there is no beginning and no end.
As to what I would like to be, it is difficult to say. An artist of some kind. If nothing else I shall always study the Arts.
Every good artist paints what he is.
I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image... because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess.
It doesn't matter how the paint is put on, as long as something is said.
There was a reviewer... who wrote that my pictures didn't have any beginning or any end. He didn't mean it as a compliment, but it was. It was a fine compliment.
Art is coming face to face with yourself.
I want to express my feelings, not illustrate them.
Most of the paint I use is a liquid, flowing kind of paint, the brushes I use are used more as sticks rather than brushes – the brush doesn't touch the surface of the canvas, it's just above.
I don't work from drawings. I don't make sketches and drawings and colour sketches into a final painting.
The modern artist, it seems to me, is working and expressing an inner world in other words – expressing the energy, the motion and other inner forces.:
New needs need new techniques. And the modern artists have found new ways and new means of making their statements... the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture.
I don't paint nature. I am nature.
When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing.
The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.
Painting is a state of being.
Painting is no problem. The problem is what to do when you're not painting.
In response to the question, "How do you know when you're finished?" Pollock replied, "How do you know when you're finished making love?"
-on studying under Thomas Hart Benton at Manhattan's Art Students League...
He drove his kind of realism at me so hard I bounced right into non-objective painting.
My painting does not come from the easel... On the floor I am more at ease.
I am doubtful of any talent, so whatever I choose to be, will be accomplished only by long study and work...
You can't learn techniques and then try to become a painter. Techniques are a result.
Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.
When I'm painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It's only after a get acquainted period that I see what I've been about.
A man's life is his work; his work is his life.
Quotes from Artist Way
Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness--
I wouldn't know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.
~ Aaron Copland ~
Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.
~ Pablo Picasso ~
Experience, even for a painter, is not exclusively visual.
~ Walter Meigs ~
The most potent muse of all is our own inner child.
~ Stephen Nachmanovitch ~
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
~ Pablo Picasso ~
To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
~ Joseph Chilton Pearce ~
Painting is an attempt to come to terms with life. There are as many solutions as there are human beings.
~ George Tooker ~
To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.
~ Robert Louis Stevenson ~
I shut my eyes in order to see.
~ Paul Gauguin ~
The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
~ Henry David Thoreau ~
Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.
~ Eugene Delacroix ~
We all have ability. The difference is in how we use it.
~ Stevie Wonder ~
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.
~ Martha Graham ~
You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.
~ Colette ~
Always leave enough time in your life to do something that makes you happy, satisfied, even joyous. That has more of an effect on economic well-being than any other single factor.
~ Paul Hawken ~
We cannot escape fear. We can only transform it into a companion that accompanies us on all our exciting adventures . . . Take a risk a day--one small or bold stroke that will make you feel great once you have done it.
~ Susan Jeffers ~
I don't have a lot of respect for talent. Talent is genetic.
It's what you do with it that counts.
~ Martin Ritt ~
I shall become a master in this art only after a great deal of practice.
~ Erich Fromm ~
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
~ Albert Einstein ~
Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.
~ Edgar Degas ~
A painting is never finished--it simply stops in interesting places.
~ Paul Gardner ~
General Art Quotes
When I work, I work very fast, but preparing to work can take any length of time.
::: Cy Twombly :::
A painter paints the appearance of things, not their objective correctness, in fact he creates new appearances of things.
::: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner :::
All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness.
::: Eckhart Tolle :::
I've never believed in God, but I believe in Picasso.
::: Diego Rivera :::
I dream a lot. I do more painting when I'm not painting. It's in the subconscious.
::: Andrew Wyeth :::
At moments of great enthusiasm it seems to me that no one in the world has ever made something this beautiful and important.
::: M.C. Escher :::
I am essentially a painter of the kind of still life composition that communicates a sense of tranquillity and privacy, moods which I have always valued above all else.
::: Giorgio Morandi :::
A sincere artist is not one who makes a faithful attempt to put on to canvas what is in front of him, but one who tries to create something which is, in itself, a living thing.
::: William Dobell :::
There's no retirement for an artist, it's your way of living so there's no end to it.
::: Henry Moore :::
You come to nature with all her theories, and she knocks them all flat.
::: Renoir :::
I’m not an abstractionist. I’m not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.
::: Mark Rothko :::
Reason is powerless in the expression of Love.
::: Rumi :::
The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.
::: Michelangelo :::
O great creator of being grant us one more hour to perform our art and perfect our lives.
::: Jim Morrison :::
+ It took me 40 years to find out that painting is not sculpture. Marc Chagall
+ I am out to introduce a psychic shock into my painting, one that is always motivated by pictorial reasoning: that is to say, a fourth dimension. Salvador Dali quotes
+ At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since. Leonardo da Vinci
+ One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.
+ Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.
Henri Matisse
+ Cezanne, you see, is a sort of God of painting.
• Claude Monet
+ Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.
• Jackson Pollock
+ Practise what you know, and it will help to make clear what now you do not know.
• Vincent Van Gogh
Picasso's Confession
"When I was young, like all the young, art, great art, was my religion; but with the years, I came to see that art, as it was understood until 1800; was henceforth finished, on its last legs, doomed, and that so called artistic activity with all its abundance is only the many formed manifestation of its agony. Men are detached from and more and more disinterested in painting, sculpture and poetry; appearances to the contrary, men today have put their hearts into everything else; the machine, scientific discoveries, wealth, the domination of natural forces and immense territories. We no longer feel art as a vital need, as a spiritual necessity, as was the case in centuries past.
Many of us continue to be artists and to be occupied with art for reasons which have little in common with true art, but rather through a spirit of imitation, through nostalgia for tradition, through mere inertia, through love of ostentation, of prodigality, of intellectual curiosity, through fashion or through calculation. They live still through force of habit and snobbery in a recent past, but the great majority in all places no longer have any sincere passion for art, which they consider at most as a diversion, a hobby and a decoration. Little by little, new generations with a predilection for mechanics and sports, more sincere, more cynical and brutal, will leave art to the museums and libraries as an incomprehensible and useless relic of the past.
From the moment that art is no longer the sustenance that nourishes the best, the artist may exteriorize his talent in all sorts of experiments with new formulas, in endless caprices and fancy, in all the expedients of intellectual charlatanism. In the arts, people no longer seek consolation, nor exaltation. But the refined, the rich, the indolent, distillers of quintessence seek the new, the unusual, the original, the extravagant, the shocking. And I, since cubism and beyond, I have satisfied these gentlemen and these critics with all the various whims which have entered my head, and the less they understood them, the more they admired. By amusing myself at these games, at all these tomfooleries, at all these brain-busters, riddles and arabesques, I became famous quite rapidly. And celebrity means for a painter: sales increment, money, wealth.
Today, as you know, I am famous and very rich. But when completely alone with myself, I haven't the nerve to consider myself an artist in the great and ancient sense of the word. There have been great painters like Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt and Goya. I am only a public entertainer who has understood his time. This is a bitter confession, mine, more painful indeed than it may seem, but it has the merit of being sincere."
PABLO PICASSO (FROM: ORIGIN 12, January 1964 Cid Corman, Editor Kyoto, Japan.; cited by Artcompasas Amsterdam: GOTOBUTTON BM_1_ http://www.euronet.nl/users/artcompas/index.html )
Pablo Picasso's Confessions
In many of my discussions with people who defend "modern art", people express the idea that the artist is by definition right about his evaluation of his own "art" and that nobody else can really decide whether or not it is good or valuable since "It could be that there's really something deeply important hidden beyond your ability to interpret it." Though I don't subscribe to that position myself, it might be instructive for such people to listen to what Pablo Picasso, one of the early proponents of the ugly and meaningless in 20th century painting had to say about his work.
This page previously included quotes reportedly taken from an interview with Picasso by Giovanni Papini called "Picasso Confesses". As it turns out this was a fantasy interview which never took place. As it turns out, Picasso said numerous things at least as bad as what was reported earlier.
On Sayings...
"If you take my sayings and explode them in the air, they remain only sayings. But if you fit them together in their correct places, you will have the whole story." (Dor del la Souchere, 1960, p. 13)
On The Parthenon...
"The Parthenon is really only a farmyard over which someone put a roof; colonades and sculptures were added because there were people in Athens who happened to be working and wanted to express themselves. It is not what the artist does that counts, but what he is. Cezanne would never have interested me a bit if he had lived and thought like Jacques Emile Blanche, even if the apple he painted had been ten times as beautiful. What forces our interest is Cezanne's anxiety - that's Cezanne's lesson; the torments of Van Gogh - that is the actual drama of the man. The rest is a sham." (Cashiers de Art, Conversation Avec Picasso, 1949)
On The Dictatorship of the Painter(s)...
"There ought to be an absolute dictatorship...a dictatorship of painters...a dictatorship of one painter...to suppress all those who have betrayed us, to suppress the cheaters, to suppress the tricks, to suppress the mannerisms, to suppress charms, to suppress history, to suppress a heap of other things. But common sense always gets away with it. Above all, let's have a revolution against that! The true dictator will always be conquered by the dictatorship of common sense...and maybe not!" (Cashiers de Art, Conversation Avec Picasso, 1949)
On Guernica and Communism...
"I am a communist and my painting is a communist painting. But if I were a shoemaker, Royalist or Communist or anything else, I would not necessarily hammer my shoes in any special way to show my politics." (Interview with Jerome Seckler, 1945, Picasso Explains)
On Truth...
"What is truth? Truth cannot exist. ... Truth does not exist. ... Truth is a lie." (Parmelin, Picasso: The Artist, His Model, and Other Related Works, 1965, p. 110)
On How Awful Art Is...
"Enough of Art. It's Art that kills us. People no longer want to do painting: they make art. People want Art. And they are given it. But the less Art there is in painting the more painting there is." (Parmelin, Picasso Plain, 1964, p. 30)
On Truth and Lies...
"We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies." (The Arts, Picasso Speaks, 1923)
On The Threat of Artists...
"[T]oday we haven't the heart to expel the painters and poets from society because we refuse to admit to ourselves that there is any danger in keeping them in our midst." (Cashiers de Art, Conversation Avec Picasso, 1949)
On Academic Training...
"Academic training in beauty is a sham. We have been so deceived, but so well deceived that we can scarcely get back even a shadow of the truth." (Cashiers de Art, Conversation Avec Picasso, 1949)
On Planning...
"I see, for others, that is to say, in order to put on canvas the sudden apparitions which come to me. I don't know in advance what I am going to put on canvas any more than I decide beforehand what colors I am going to use. While I am working I am not conscious of what I am putting on the canvas. Each time I undertake to paint a picture I have a sensation of leaping into space. I never know whether I shall fall on my feet. It is only later that I begin to estimate more exactly the effect of my work." (Zervos, Pablo Picasso, 1932, p. xv)
On The Virtue of Vagueness...
"You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea." (Kahnweiler, Juan Gris: sa vie, son oeuvre, ses ecrits, 1946, p. 83)
On Planning...
"One never knows what one is going to do. One starts a painting and then it becomes something quite else. It is remarkable how little the 'willing' of the artist intervenes." (Kahnweiler, Gesprache mit Picasso, 1959, p. 85-98)
On Subjects...
"...even if the painting is green, well then! the 'subject' is the green. There is always a subjet; it's a joke to suppress the subject, it's impossible." (Parmelin, Picasso: The Artist and His Model, and other Recent Works, 1965, p. 43)
On Bad Habits...
"I paint the way someone bite his fingernails; for me, painting is a bad habit because I don't know nor can I do anything else." (Gallego Morell, de Renoir a Picasso, 1958, p. 3)
On Imitation...
"Imitators? All right! Disciples if your like. But disciples be damned. It's not interesting. It's only the masters that matter. Those who create. And they don't even turn around when you piss on their heels..." (Georges-Michel, de Renoir a Picasso, 1954, p. 94-95)
On Imitation...
"What does it mean for a painter to paint in the manner of So-and-So or to actually imitate someone else? What's wrong with that? On the contrary, it's a good idea. You should constantly try to paint like someone else. But the thing is, you can't! You would like to. You try. But it turns out to be a botch...And at the very moment you make a botch of it that you're yourself." (Parmelin, Picasso: The Artist and His Model, and other Recent Works, 1965, p. 43)
On Beauty...
"'I have never in any museum seen a picture as beautiful as this one.' [Picasso] said to me, pointing to a sheet of tin hanging on the door. 'the man who painted this picture was not thinking of his glory.'" (Sabartes, Picasso: portraits et souvenirs, 1946, p. 210-212)
On Bad Paintings...
"I like all painting. I always look at the paintings - good or bad - in barbershops, furniture stores, provincial hotels...I'm like a drinker who needs wine. As long as it is wine, it doesn't matter which wine." (Guttuso, Journals, Quoted in Mario De Micheli, 1964)
On Objective Reality...
"The goal I proposed myself in making cubism? To paint and nothing more. And to paint seeking a new expression, divested of useless realism, with a method linked only to my thought - without enslaving myself with objective reality. Neither the good nor the true; neither the useful or the useless." (Del Pomar, Con las Buscadores del Camino, 1932, p. 126)
On Beauty, Art, and Research...
"I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful? One must speak of problems in painting! Paintings are but research and experiment. I never do a painting as a work of art. All of them are researches." (Liberman, Picasso, Vogue, November 1, 1956)
On Blindness as a Virtue...
"[T]hey ought to put out the eyes of painters as they do goldfinches in order that they can sing better." (Teriade, En causant avec Picasso, Intransigeant, June 15, 1932)
On Kiddie Art...
When visiting an exhibition of children's drawings, Piscasso remarked: "When I was their age I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like them." (Penrose, Picasso: His Life and Work, 1958, p. 275)
On Imposters...
"Museums are just a lot of lies, and the people who make art their business are mostly imposters." (Zervos, Conversation avec Picasso, 1935)
On Symbolism and Communism...
"If I paint a hammer and sickle people may think it is a representation of Communism, but for me it is only a hammer and sickle. I just want to reproduce the objects for what they are, not for what they mean." (Interview with Jerome Seckler, Picasso Explains, 1945)
On Re-Education Camps and Art...
"If everyone would paint, political re-education would be unnecessary." (Spender, Keeping a Great City Alive, Vogue, December 1946, p. 194, 224, 226)
On Art as a Weapon...
"No, painting is not made to decorate apartments, it's an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy." (Tery, Picasso, n'est pas officer dans l'Armee francaise, Les Lettres Francaises, March 24, 1945)
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You must do the thing you think you cannot do. Eleanor Roosevelt
If only human beings could be more reverent toward their own fruitfulness. Rilke
The passion to make and make again. Adrienne Rich
Artists are channels for cultural feelings and creators of images that the culture is hungry for and doesn’t even know it. Vicki Noble
God, guard me from those thoughts Men think in the mind alone. He that sings a lasting song, thinks in the marrow-bone. Yeats