Artist Quotations - Famous Artists |
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Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.
Art is knowing which ones to keep. |
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I do not like to be a prophet. I like better to
paint than to predict what the next painters will
do. Though I have a feeling that consideration of
order is very much in the air. |
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I have always been very much involved in the pseudo
biological cycle of production, consumption and
destruction. And for a long time, I have been anguished
by the fact that one of its most conspicuous material
results is the flooding of our world with junk and
rejected odd objects. |
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+ Art is a fruit that grows in man, like a fruit
on a plant, or a child in its mother’s womb. |
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+ I think that the very earliest influence was a
horror of having to work in a bank or an office,
a desire for a free and creative life. |
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If a day goes by without my doing something related
to photography, it's as though I've neglected something
essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten
to wake up. |
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+ The job of the artist is always to deepen the
mystery. |
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The holy grail is to spend less time making the
picture than it takes people to look at it. |
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Painting is a language which cannot be replaced
by another language. I don’t know what to say
about what I paint, really. |
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+ ...I paint German artists whom I admire. I paint
their pictures, their work as painters, and their
portraits too. But oddly enough, each of these portraits
ends up as a picture of a woman with blonde hair.
I myself have never been able to work out why this
happens. |
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Believe it or not, I can actually draw. |
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One of the wonderful things about a museum is how
you're jolted into confronting art from strange
and wonderful civilizations and you look and learn
and expand your horizons. |
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My heart beats more for a raw, average vulgar art,
which doesn't live between sleepy fairy-tale moods
and poetry but rather concedes a direct entrance
to the fearful, commonplace, splendid and the average
grotesque banality in life. |
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I myself do nothing. The Holy Spirit accomplishes
all through me. |
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The artist who paints the emotions creates an enclosed
world.. the picture.. which, like a book, has the
same interest no matter where it happens to be.
Such an artist, we may imagine, spends a great deal
of time doing nothing but looking, both around him
and inside him. |
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+ Create like a god, command like a king, work like
a slave. |
| Georges
Braque |
:::
cubist painter :::
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+ Art is made to disturb. Science reassures.
There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing
you cannot explain. |
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+ The mind which plunges into Surrealism, relives
with burning excitement the best part of childhood. |
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+ Contemporary art challenges us.. it broadens our
horizons. It asks us to think beyond the limits
of conventional wisdom. |
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I believe in working hard. Painting is serious.
A vice, not a play thing. |
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The sense of motion in painting and sculpture has
long been considered as one of the primary elements
of the composition. |
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Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible
things before breakfast. |
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+ It took me 40 years to find out that painting
is not sculpture. |
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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. |
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I never paint a portrait from a photograph, because
a photograph doesn't give enough information about
what the person feels. |
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I always thought that one of the reasons why a painter
likes especially to have other painters look at
his or her work is the shared experience of having
pushed paint around. |
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The beautiful is in nature, and it is encountered
under the most diverse forms of reality. Once it
is found it belongs to art, or rather to the artist
who discovers it. |
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At some point we’ve got to stop asking ourselves
what is the meaning of everything, maybe it’s
not so very important what it means. It’s probably
more important what the sense of it is.. they are
two very basic and different things. |
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I decided to be more brave about what was coming
out. I used to draw that stuff in secret and throw
it away. Flush it down the toilet. I wanted to see
what the readership could take. |
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It is not enough to give signals. Things can only
ever last if they have functioned as signs. |
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+ 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. |
| Jacques-Louis
David |
:::
famous artist :::
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+ To give body and perfect form to your thought,
this alone is what it is to be an artist. |
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+ To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape
all human limits: logic and common sense will only
interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it
will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams. |
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+ Everyone has talent at 25. The difficulty is to
have it at 50. |
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+ Whatever an artist’s personal feelings are,
as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the
canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical.
He acts from or upon other artists. |
| Eugene
Delacroix |
:::
famous artist :::
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+ What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires
their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession
with the idea that what has already been said is
still not enough. |
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In a successful painting everything is integral..
all the parts belong to the whole. If you remove
an aspect or element you are removing its wholeness. |
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+ My attitude towards drawing is not necessarily
about drawing. It's about making the best kind of
image I can make, it's about talking as clearly
as I can. |
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It's all the same to me. I must keep the first impression
fresh. If it is lost, I must find it again. |
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A sincere artist is not one who makes a faithful
attempt to put on to canvas what is in front of
him, but one tries to create something which is,
in itself, a living thing. |
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I constantly have to negotiate with my doubts. |
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Art shouldn't be something that you go quietly into
an art gallery and dip your forelock and say 'I
have to be very quiet, I'm in here amongst the art.'
It's here, art's everywhere. It's how you use your
eyes. It's about the enjoyment of visual things.
And it's certainly not for any one group of people. |
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What I expect from any work of art is that it surprises
me, that it violates my customary valuations of
things and offers me other, unexpected ones. |
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I have forced myself to contradict myself in order
to avoid conforming to my own taste. |
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What a funny thing painting is. The abstract painters
always insist on their connection with the visible
reality, while the so called figurative artists
insist that what they really care about, is the
abstract qualities of life. |
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+ I’m a terrible cook, but if I could cook,
I would see that as art as well, it’s how much
creative energy you put into something. |
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At moments of great enthusiasm it seems to me that
no one in the world has ever made something this
beautiful and important. |
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+ I remember Francis Bacon would say that he felt
he was giving art what he thought it previously
lacked. With me, it's what Yeats called the fascination
with what's difficult. I'm only trying to do what
I can't do. |
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Those who look for the laws of Nature as a support
for their new works collaborate with the creator. |
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+ We never really know what stupidity is
until we have experimented on ourselves. |
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The trouble with flowers is that invariably, when
I'm ready to photograph them, they are not in season. |
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I think my best skill as an architect is the achievement
of hand-to-eye coordination. I am able to transfer
a sketch into a model into the building. |
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The head is what matters. The rest of the body plays
the part of antennae making life possible for people
and life itself is inside the skull. |
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Some people would say my paintings show a future
world and maybe they do, but I paint from reality. |
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A clergyman once said to us, "Jealousy is a
bad thing. But I must confess that I am sometimes
jealous of the artist because the artist is closer
to creation". (George) |
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Making beautiful things for everyday use is a wonderful
thing to do.. making life flow more easily.. but
art confronts life, allowing it to stop and perhaps
change direction.. they are completely different. |
| Francisco
Goya |
:::
spanish master :::
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+ Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces
impossible monsters; united with it, she is the
mother of the arts and the origin of marvels. |
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+ You are lost the instant you know what the result
will be. |
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My life changed when I was able to not only get
seated in nice restaurants, I was given free appetizers.
That was like, "Oh, my God, I've arrived." |
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+ I am a night painter, so when I come into the
studio the next morning the delirium is over. I
come into the studio very fearfully, I creep in
to see what happened the night before. And the feeling
is one of, "My God, did I do that?". |
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+ My contribution to the world is my ability to
draw. I will draw as much as I can for as many people
as I can for as long as I can. Drawing is still
basically the same as it has been since prehistoric
times. It brings together man and the world. It
lives through magic. |
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I think art is good at looking back and looking
forward. I don't think art is good at looking head-on.
At the end of the day, people are more important
than paintings. |
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+ There comes a point where you see it all
as completely empty being a popular artist to the
extent that people who are not necessarily interested
in art know about things or take some little interest.
I think that now for me it's a burden. It's a bit
hard to deal with and it wastes time as well. |
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+ A work of art is a world in itself reflecting
senses and emotions of the artist's world. |
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I prefer every time a picture composed and painted
outdoors. The thing is done without your knowing
it. |
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+ Great art is the outward expression of an inner
life in the artist. |
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+ I tend to like things that already exist. |
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I didn't want to get into something which is played
out and narrow. I want to do as I like, invent my
own interests. |
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+ I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone,
because I am the person I know best. |
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+ An empty canvas is a living wonder.. far lovelier
than certain pictures. |
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+ To me, it's not work. When I draw and I write,
I find it relaxing. It's not like 9-to-5, where
a man goes to a job and he isn't really interested
in the job. Luckily, I get paid for doing what I'd
do for nothing. |
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We live in a fractured world. I've always seen it
as my role as an artist to attempt to make wholeness. |
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I believe art has to take responsibility but it
should not give up being art. |
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What I paint touches on foundational life values.
Home, family, peacefulness. And one of the messages
I try to constantly get across is slow it down and
enjoy every moment. |
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I am rather like a travelling salesman. I deal in
ideas. I do much more for people than just paint
them pictures. |
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My paintings are allegories not portraits. |
| R.B.
Kitaj quotes |
:::
artist :::
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+ There are some people who don't like museums because
they think of them as tombs, or something negative.
I've always loved them. They are to me lighthouses
of utopianism and social well-being. |
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Everything vanishes around me, and works are born
as if out of the void. Ripe, graphic fruits fall
off. My hand has become the obedient instrument
of a remote will. |
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As I lay stretched upon the beach of Nice, I began
to feel hatred for birds which flew back and forth
across my blue sky, cloudless sky, because they
tried to bore holes in my greatest and most beautiful
work. |
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+ Whoever wants to know something about me (as an
artist, the only notable thing) ought to look carefully
at my pictures and try and see in them what I am
and what I want to do. |
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The final test of a painting, theirs, mine, any
other, is: does the painter's emotions come across? |
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I'm basically the idea person. I'm not physically
involved in the production. I don't have the necessary
abilities, so I go to the top people.. |
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We get used to a certain kind of color of form or
format, and it's acceptable. And to puncture that
is sticking your neck out a bit. And then pretty
soon, that's very acceptable. |
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+ I always say that I'm an artist who works with
pictures and words, so I think that the different
aspects of my activity, whether it's writing criticism,
or doing visual work that incorporates writing,
or teaching, or curating, is all of a single cloth,
and I don't make any separation in terms of those
practices. |
| David
Larwill Quotes |
:::
Australian Painter :::
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+ Make sure you love art and don't do it
if you don't, because you'll be found out. Don't
listen to the teachers. And feel it. Do it because
you can't do anything else. Once you've decided,
don't do anything else, because as someone once
said, "art is long". |
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Picasso
wouldn't have churned out the same number of documented
works of art as the days he lived on earth if he
hadn't been obsessed. If Beethoven hadn't been obsessed
with music he probably would have given the game
away when he realised he was deaf. |
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Above all, it is a matter of loving art, not understanding
it. |
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One can have no smaller or greater mastery than
mastery of oneself.
+ Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his
master. |
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For me, spirit is the impulse towards life, the
Eros in a person leaping forward, whereas soul refers
to something possibly long.. suffering, where meanings
are made, where there is a sense of this gathering
of perceptions, that our death is not the most important
thing, nor our life. |
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I'm not really sure what social message my art carries,
if any. And I don't really want it to carry one.
I'm not interested in the subject matter to try
to teach society anything, or to try to better our
world in any way. |
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Thing about animation is there are people who associate
it more with being a visual art. I've actually always
thought of animation as more closely related to
the performing arts. So many of the same rules of
acting apply. In a lot of cases you don't have to
be a terrific artist. |
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The most important thing for me is the direct observation
of nature in its light-filled existence. |
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+ Life obliges me to do something, so I paint. |
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+ With the most primitive means the artist creates
something which the most ingenious and efficient
technology will never be able to create. |
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I never liked photography. Not for the sake of photography.
I like the object. I like the photographs when you
hold them in your hand. |
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The relationship between my painting and my sculpture
is intimately connected. I would never begin a sculpture
without first experiencing color. |
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+ Cezanne, you see, is a sort of God of painting. |
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+ If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery,
it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all. |
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+ I try to apply colors like words that shape poems,
like notes that shape music. |
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+ What I am seeking is not the real and not the
unreal but rather the unconscious, the mystery of
the instinctive in the human race. |
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+ Art is not made for anybody and is, at
the same time, for everybody. |
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+ Colour is my day-long obsession, joy and torment. |
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There are universal shapes to which everyone is
subconsciously conditioned and to which they can
respond if their conscious control does not shut
them off. |
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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. |
| Berthe
Morisot |
:::
famous artist :::
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+ It is important to express oneself...provided
the feelings are real and are taken from you own
experience. |
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+ Most painting in the European tradition was painting
the mask. Modern art rejected all that. Our subject
matter was the person behind the mask. |
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+ No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading
and women knitting. I will paint living people who
breathe and feel and suffer and love. |
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Whether I'm painting or not, I have this overweening
interest in humanity. Even if I'm not working, I'm
still analyzing people. |
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The photographs don't arouse me. All I can think
about is the hard work it took to make them. |
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The art of stone in a Japanese garden is that of
placement. Its ideal does not deviate from that
of nature. But I am also a sculptor of the West.
I place my mark and do not hide. |
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+ I found I could say things with color and shapes
that I couldn't say any other way--things I had
no words for. |
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+ I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical,
that does something other than sit on its ass in
a museum. |
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You're sitting there with your muse and your muse
is telling you something and you’re following
it, and you end up the next day looking at it and
thinking "what the hell was the muse saying
to me?" |
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+ I think a single sentence by Van
Gogh is better than the whole work of all
the art critics and art historians put together. |
| Samuel
Palmer quotes |
:::
romantic artist :::
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+ If my aspirations are very high, my depressions
are very deep, yet my pinions never loved the middle
air. |
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Every good painter paints what he is. |
| Francis
Picabia |
:::
famous artist :::
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+ If you want to have clean ideas, change them as
often as you change your shirts. |
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Painting is stronger than me, it makes me do its
bidding. |
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A lot of it’s experimental, spontaneous. It's
about knocking about in the studio and bumping into
things. |
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+ I think that in the last twenty years or so, there's
been a new kind of honesty in painting where painters
have been very proud of paint and have let it behave
openly. |
| Odilon
Redon quotes |
:::
famous artist :::
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+ While I recognize the necessity for a basis
of observed reality - true art lies in a reality
that is felt. |
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Practise what you know, and it will help to make
clear what now you do not know. |
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Every change is a form of liberation. My mother
used to say a change is always good even if it's
for the worse. |
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+ You come to nature with all her theories, and
she knocks them all flat. |
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I can't always reach the image in my mind.. almost
never, in fact.. so that the abstract image I create
is not quite there, but it gets to the point where
I can leave it. |
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For me nature is not landscape, but the dynamism
of visual forces.. an event rather than an appearance.
These forces can only be tackled by treating color
and form as ultimate identities, freeing them from
all descriptive or functional roles. |
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+ I've never believed in God, but I believe in Picasso. |
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The sculptor represents the transition from one
pose to another.. he indicates how insensibly the
first glides into the second. In his work we still
see a part of what was and we discover a part of
what is to be. |
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I tell young people that the greatest paintings
in museums are made with minerals mixed in oil smeared
on cloth with the hair from the back of a pig's
ear. It's that simple. |
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+ Sometimes the painting starts to relate very directly
to either sights seen or experiences felt, other
times it just goes off on a tangent that you really
can’t articulate. |
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+ It is a widely accepted notion among painters
that it does not matter what one paints as long
as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism.
There is no such thing as good painting about nothing. |
| Georges
Rouault |
:::
famous artist :::
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+ For me, painting is a way to forget life.
It is a cry in the night, a strangled laugh. |
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+ When I go out into the countryside and see the
sun and the green and everything flowering, I say
to myself "Yes indeed, all that belongs to
me!". |
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+ Ever since I started painting, I have tried to
get the fluidity and surprise of image connection,
the simultaneity of film montage, into painting. |
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+ I like making work in my studio day in and day
out, but I'm not so interested in the business side. |
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+ I must see new things and investigate them. I
want to taste dark water and see crackling trees
and wild winds. |
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+ I do dream about art, and images come to me in
dreams. I am definitely hoping to be in touch with
my subconscious. I expect a call any minute. |
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If I were a better artist, I'd be a painter, and
if I were a better writer, I'd write books.. but
I'm not, so I draw cartoons! |
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I'm not precious about my work. If you get it out
into the urban field it's going to be used or misused
but it'll also probably provide a way of people
acknowledging what the aesthetic is about because
people have to confront it every day. |
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I was supporting myself, but nothing like the guy
painters, as I refer to them. I always resented
that actually.. we were all getting the same amount
of press, but they were going gangbusters with sales. |
| Shih't
ao |
:::
chinese artist :::
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+ I meet the world as it comes, yield superficially
to the hustlers, and thus achieve peace of mind.
With peace of mind comes a painting. |
| John
Singer Sargent |
:::
famous artist :::
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+ Everytime I paint a portrait I lose a friend. |
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I like living in the 20th century.. to me the world
has never been more beautiful. I am trying to paint
the real world I live in, as beautifully as I can
with my own eyes. |
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+ I don't like a lot of the stuff that goes on in
the art world, but it's hard to be old and like
what goes on around you. |
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+ In our time there are many artists who do something
because it is new; they see their value and their
justification in this newness. They are deceiving
themselves; novelty is seldom the essential. This
has to do with one thing only; making a subject
better from its intrinsic nature. |
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I'm trying to create flesh architecture. I aim to
get a sculptural feel for groups of bodies, as well
as create performance art. |
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When I work, I work very fast, but preparing to
work can take any length of time. |
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I'm painting an idea not an ideal. Basically I'm
trying to paint a structured painting full of controlled,
and therefore potent, emotion. |
| Theo
van Gogh |
:::
art dealer :::
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+ He (Vincent) has painted a few portraits
which have turned out well, but he always does them
for no payment. It is a pity that he does not want
to earn something, for if he did want to he could
make something here, but you can't change a person. |
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+ The only time I feel alive is when I'm
painting. |
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Human beings have always been creative. The guys
who were making the pyramids.. and archaeological
research has showed us this.. had little figurines
made by the workers, to express their devotion to
their god. |
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I was poor but I knew that life is beautiful. And
I had no other ambition than to discover with the
help of new means those deep inner ties that linked
me to the very soil. |
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Why do people think artists are special? It's just
another job.
+ Don't pay any attention to what they write about
you. Just measure it in inches. |
| James
McNeill Whistler |
:::
famous artist :::
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+ An artist's career always begins tomorrow.
+ An artist is not paid for his labor but for
his vision. |
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+ Art is the thrilling spark that beats death
- thats all. |
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I realized that all the really good ideas I'd ever
had came to me while I was milking a cow. So I went
back to Iowa. |
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Artists today think of everything they do as a work
of art. It is important to forget about what you
are doing.. then a work of art may happen. |
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Quotes by art critics - art collectors & gallery
owners |
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| Mary
Boon (Art Collector) |
:::
Gallery Owner :::
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I had reservations about making art a business,
but I got over it. |
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One of the wonderful things about a museum is how
you're jolted into confronting art from strange
and wonderful civilizations and you look and learn
and expand your horizons. |
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We have differences but we're not made different.
If you don't agree with me, you're wrong.
+ In visual arts, prodigies don't count. In music
and literature, yes, but not in art. |
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With its hacked contours, staring interrogatory
eyes, and general feeling of instability, Les Demoiselles
is still a disturbing painting after three quarters
of a century, a refutationof the idea that the surprise
of art, like the surprise of fasion, must necessarily
wear off. No painting ever looked more convulsive. |
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+ Van Gogh, among others, believed in the religion
of art, which, whatever else it involved, made it
clear that art is more than the sum of its material
characteristics and not simply a reflection of everyday
life. |
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+ There are no rules about investment. Sharks can
be good. Artist’s dung can be good. Oil on
canvas can be good. There’s a squad of conservators
out there to look after anything an artist decides
is art. |
| David
Sylvester (art critic) |
:::
art critic :::
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Warhol turned to photographs of stars, as the Renaissance
turned to antiquities, to find images of gods. |
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Quotes by architects - illustrators & designers |
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+ I know the price of success: dedication,
hard work and an unremitting devotion to the things
you want to see happen. |
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Famous
quotes about art
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:::
quote categories> Artist Quotes /
art quotes
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