Art Quotes

“It would be very curious to record by means of photographs, not the stage of the picture, but its metamorphoses. Perhaps one would perceive the path taken by the mind in order to put its dreams into a concrete form. But what is really very curious is to observe that fundamentally the picture does not change, that despite appearances the initial vision remains almost intact (Boisgeloup, winter 1934).”

“Abstract art is only painting. What about drama? There is no abstract art. You always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.”

“Neither is there figurative and non-figurative art. All things appear to us in the shape of forms. Even in metaphysics ideas are expressed by forms, well then think how absurd it would be to think of painting without the imagery of forms. A figure, an object, a circle, are forms; they affects us more or less intensely. [Boisgeloup, winter 1934].”

“With an apple I will astonish Paris.”

“Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one's sensations.”

“The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.”

“Treat nature by means of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone.”

“Colour is the place where our brain and the universe meet.”

“I could paint for a hundred years, a thousand years without stopping and I would still feel as though I knew nothing.”

“Colour! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams.”

“I shut my eyes in order to see.”

“Art is either plagiarism or revolution.”

“A meter of green is greener in a painting than in nature.”

“A line is a dot that went for a walk.”

“Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.”

“Colour possesses me. Colour and I are one. I am a painter.”

“One eye sees, the other feels.”

“Drawing is the art of taking a line for a walk.”

“As time passes I become more and more afraid of my growing love of music. I don’t understand myself. I play solo sonatas by Bach: next to them, what is Böcklin? It makes me smile.”

“You know what I want to become temporarily today: a painter? No. A simple and common designer. But a biting one. I would like to deride humanity, nothing less. And this with the simplest means, in black and white. At the same time - oh blasphemy - I would like to attack our Lord adequately.”

“Music, for me, is a love bewitched. / Fame as a painter? / Writer, modern poet? Bad joke. / So I have no calling, and loaf.”

“The conviction that painting is the right profession grows stronger and stronger in me. Writing is the only other thing I still feel attracted to. Perhaps when I am mature I shall go back to it.”

“..I served Beauty by drawing her enemies.”

“Thoughts about the art of portraiture. Some will not recognize the truthfulness of my mirror. Let them remember that I am not here to reflect the surface (this can be done by the photographic plate), but must penetrate inside. My mirror probes down to the heart. I write words on the forehead and around the corners of the mouth. My human faces are truer than the real ones.”

“My mirror probes down to the heart. I write words on the forehead and around the corners of the mouth. My human faces are truer than the real ones.”

“I am God / So much of the divine / is heaped in me / that I cannot die. My head burns to the point of bursting. One of the worlds / hidden in it / wants to be born. / But now I must suffer / to bring it forth.”

“But by way of consolation: it is valueless to paint premature things, what counts is to be a personality, or at least to become one. The domination of life is one of the basic conditions of productive expression. For me this is surely the case; when I am depressed I am unable even to think about it – and this holds true for painting, sculpture, tragedy, or music. But I believe that pictures alone will abundantly fill out this one life.”

“I have a feeling that sooner or later I shall arrive at something legitimate, only I must begin, not with hypotheses, but with specific instances, no matter how minute. If I then succeed in distinguishing a clear structure, I get more from it than from a lofty imaginary construction. And the typical will automatically follow from a series of examples.”

“The main thing now is not to paint precociously but to be, or at least become, an individual. The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical compositions.”

“The naked body is an altogether suitable object. In art classes I have gradually learned something of it from every angle. But now I will no more project some plan of it: I will proceed so that all its essentials, even those hidden by optical perspective, will appear upon the paper. And thus a little uncontested personal property has already been discovered, a style has been created.”