Georges Braque: Quotes about art

“One day I noticed that I could go on working art my motif no matter what the weather might be. I no longer needed the sun, for I took my light everywhere with me.”

Georges Braque

Source: posthumous quotes, Braque', (1968), p. 30 - Braque's quote from the book, written by John Rusell, London 1959

Art , Light , Sun , Weather

“The only valid thing in art is that which cannot be explained. To explain away the mystery of a great painting – if such a feat were possible – would be irreparable harm… If there is no mystery then there is no 'poetry', the quality I value above all else in art. What do I mean by 'poetry'? It is to a painting what life is to man… For me it is a matter of harmony, of rapports, of rhythm and – most important for my own work – of 'metamorphosis”

Georges Braque

1946 - 1963, interview with John Richardson' (1957)

Life , Art , Painting

“I couldn't portray a women in all her natural loveliness.... I haven't the skill. No one has. I must, therefore, create a new sort of beauty, the beauty that appears to me in terms of volume of line, of mass, of weight, and through that beauty interpret my subjective impression. Nature is mere a pretext for decorative composition, plus sentiment. It suggests emotion, and I translate that emotion into art. I want to express the absolute, not merely the factitious woman.”

Georges Braque

Quote of Braque, late 1908; as cited in The wild men of Paris, Gelett Burgess, https://monoskop.org/images/f/f3/Burgess_Gelett_1910_The_Wild_Men_of_Paris.pdf in 'The Architectural Record', p. 405, May 1910; as cited in Braque, by Edwin Mullins, Thames and Hudson, London 1968, p. 34
1908 - 1920

Women , Beauty , Art , Nature

“I started to introduce letters into my pictures [his first collage art]. These were forms which could not be deformed, because, being two-dimensional, they existed outside three-dimensional space; their inclusion in a picture allowed a distinction to be made between objects which were situated in space and those which belonged outside space”

Georges Braque

the letters
Source: posthumous quotes, Braque', (1968), p. 68

Art

“The arts which achieve their effect through purity have never been arts that were good for everything. Greek sculpture (among others) with its decadence, teaches us this.”

Georges Braque

Source: 1908 - 1920, quotes from Artists on Art...(1972), p. 422 - Braque's quote, Paris 1917

Art

“In art progress does not consist in extension, but in the knowledge of limits.
Limitation of means determines style, engenders new form, and give impulses to creation.
Limited means often constitute the charm and force of primitive painting. Extension, on the contrary, leads the arts to decadence.
New means, new subjects.
The subject is not the object; it is a new unity, a lyricism which grows completely from the means.”

Georges Braque

Source: 1908 - 1920, quotes from Artists on Art...(1972), p. 423 - short quotes by Georges Braque on 'Means' - Paris, 1917

Art , Knowledge , Painting

“Colour came into its own with papiers collés.... with these works we [Braque, and a little later Picasso, started to make 'collage art', circa 1912] succeeded in dissociating colour from form, in putting it on a footing independent of form, for that was the crux of the matter. Colour acts simultaneously with form, but has nothing to do with form.”

Georges Braque

Source: posthumous quotes, Braque', (1968), p. 75

Art

“The whole Renaissance tradition is antipathic to me. The hard-and-fast rules of perspective which it succeeded in imposing on art were a ghastly mistake which it has taken four centuries to redress; Cézanne and after him Picasso and myself can take a lot of credit for this.... scientific perspective forces the objects in a picture to disappear away from the beholder instead of bringing them within his reach as painting should.”

Georges Braque

1946 - 1963, interview with John Richardson' (1957)

Art , Painting

“One must beware of a formula good for everything, that will serve to interpret the other arts as well as reality, and that instead of creating will only produce a style, or rather a stylization.”

Georges Braque

Source: 1908 - 1920, quotes from Artists on Art...(1972), p. 422 - Braque's quote, Paris 1917

Art , Reality

“In art progress consists not in extension but in the knowledge of its limits.”

Georges Braque

Quote from the review 'Nord-Sud', December 1917
a remark of Braque's writings, he wrote during his long convalescence in the hospital, after he was seriously wounded in World War 1, in 1915
1908 - 1920

Art , Knowledge

“Art is polymorphic. A picture appears to each onlooker under a different guise.”

Georges Braque

Quote by Braque from: 'Cahiers d'Art', No. 10, 1935, ed. Christian Zervos
1921 - 1945

Art , Appearance