Hans Hofmann Quotes (67 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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Famous Hans Hofmann Quotes

“Every art expression is rooted fundamentally in the personality and temperament of the artist.”

Hans Hofmann

Quote in: 'Hans Hofmann' by Cynthia Goodman, in Portfolio (January - February 1981), p. 47
1970s and later

“This two-way transformation proceeds from metaphysical perceptions, for metaphysics is the search for the essential nature of reality. And so artistic creation is the metamorphosis of the external physical aspects of a thing into a self-sustaining spiritual reality. Such is the magic act which takes place continuously in the development of a work of art. On this and only on this is creation based.”

Hans Hofmann

'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 40
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

“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.”

Hans Hofmann

'Excerpts from the Teaching of Hans Hofmann', p. 64
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”

Hans Hofmann

As quoted in Zen and the Art of Stand-up Comedy (1998) by Jay Sankey
1970s and later

“I do not want to avoid immersing myself in trouble — to be a mess — to struggle out of it. I want to invent, to discover, to imagine, to speculate, to improvise — to seize the hazardous in order to be inspired. I want to experience the manifestation of the absolute — the manifestation of the unexpected in an extreme and unique relation. I know that only by following my creative instincts in an act of creative destruction will I be able to find it.”

Hans Hofmann

Statement of April 1950, as quoted in Hans Hofmann (1998), ed. Helmut Friedel and Tina Dickey
1950s

“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. Of those three components only one, the medium, is material.”

Hans Hofmann

As quoted in Hans Hofmann (1963) by William Chapin Seitz, p. 15
1960s

Hans Hofmann Quotes about art

“Basically I hate categorical labels. As a young artist I already was very clear about this — that 'objectification' is not the final aim of art. For there are greater things than the object. The greatest thing is the human mind.”

Hans Hofmann

As quoted in The Artist's Voice : Talks With Seventeen Modern Artists (1962) by Katharine Kuh, p. 118
1960s

“Robert Motherwell: Would you say that a fair statement of your position is that the 'meaning' of a work of art consists of the relations among the elements, and not the elements themselves?
Hofmann: Yes, that I would definitely say. You make a thin line and a thick line. It is the same with geometrical shapes. It is all relationship. Without all these relationships it is not possible to express higher art.”

Hans Hofmann

Interview in Modern Artists in America, First Series (1952), ed. R. Motherwell, Ad Reinhardt, and B. Karpel, p. 19, 39
1950s

“The general misunderstanding of a work of art is often due to the fact that the key to its spiritual content and technical means is missed. Unless the observer is trained to a certain degree in the artistic idiom, he is apt to search for things which have little to do with the aesthetic content of a picture. He is likely to look for pure representational values when the emphasis is really upon music-like relationships.”

Hans Hofmann

'Painting and Culture' p. 56
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

“A thought that has found a plastic expression must continue to expand in keeping with its own plastic idiom. A plastic idea must be expressed with plastic means just as a musical idea is expressed with musical means, or a literary idea with verbal means. Neither music nor literature are wholly translatable into other art forms; and so a plastic art cannot be created through a superimposed literary meaning. The artist who attempts to do so produces nothing more than a show-booth. He contents himself with visual story-telling. He subjects himself to a mechanistic kind of thinking which disintegrates into fragments.”

Hans Hofmann

'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 40-46
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

“To sense the invisible and to be able to create it — that is art.”

Hans Hofmann

Statement of 1950, as quoted in Hans Hofmann (1998), ed. Helmut Friedel and Tina Dickey
1950s

“It is the greatest injustice done to Mondrian that people who are plastically blind see only decorative design instead of the plastic perfection which characterizes his work. The whole De Stijl group from which Mondrian's art was derived must be considered a protest against such blindness.”

Hans Hofmann

'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 47
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Hans Hofmann Quotes about nature

“My paintings are always images of my whole psychic makeup. You cannot deny yourself. You ask, am I painting myself? I'd been a swindler if I did otherwise. I'd be denying my existence as an artist. I've been also asked, what do you want to convey? And I say, nothing but my own nature... I am nothing but an optimist.”

Hans Hofmann

1960s
Source: Hofmann, in Ashton, (1960's) Twetieth Century Artists on Art, 218

“Painting is aesthetic enjoyment; I want to be a 'poet'. As an artist I must conform to my nature. My nature has a lyrical as well as a dramatic disposition. Not one day is the same. One day I feel wonderful to work and I feel an expression, which shows in the work. Only with a very clear mind on a clear day I can paint without interruptions and without food because my disposition is like that. My work should reflect my moods and the greatest enjoyment I had when I did the work…”

Hans Hofmann

Quote from 'Artists' Session at Studio 35', (1950); as cited in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics (1990), ed. Clifford Ross, p. 225 
1950s

“In nature, light creates the color; in the picture, color creates light. Every color shade emanates a very characteristic light — no substitute is possible.”

Hans Hofmann

As quoted in Readings in American art, 1900 -1975 (1975) by Barbara Rose, p. 117
1970s and later
Variant: In nature, light creates the color. In the picture, color creates the light.

“Everything rhythmically organic is true. Everything, which results from the proper feeling for rhythmically organized spiritual units, is true and alive — alive within itself. When we lose the sense for such true beauty we lose our natural sense for the rich flavor of life, which is the basis for all inspirational work.
Things generally taken for beautiful are nothing other than the product of frozen, stereotyped taste, bound by sterile rules and purely exterior judgment.”

Hans Hofmann

'Painting and Culture' p. 57
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

“[visiting Jackson Pollock’s studio]: You do not work from nature. This is no good, you will repeat yourself. You work by heart, not from nature. [Pollock reacted: 'I am nature]”

Hans Hofmann

1970s and later

“Speech has arisen through the need for expression. Certain factors have contributed to making it the paramount utilitarian method of expression. There are ideas and things expressible in words, but there are ideas better expressed in music, the person with no musical ear, or without discipline in the language of music, lacks the key to the door of the world of musical experience. But we live in a world of volume and space; it is hard to conceive of the person who is space-blind or volume-deaf. The great majority of people have the means of approach to plastic beauty as part of their natural equipment. The teacher can develop this natural endowment as Necessity, the greatest teacher, has developed speech.”

Hans Hofmann

'Painting and Culture' p. 57
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Hans Hofmann: Trending quotes

“I am many people.
Technique is always the consequence of the dominating concept.... with the change of concept, technique will change.”

Hans Hofmann

1950s

People , Change

“The width of a line may present the idea of infinity. An epigram may contain a world. In the same way, a small picture format may be much more living, much more leavening, stirring, awakening, than square yards of wall space.”

Hans Hofmann

As quoted in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America (1983) by W.C, Seitz, p. 88
1970s and later

World , Way , Idea

“The encompassing, creative mind recognizes no boundaries. The mind has ever brought new spheres under its control.
All our experiences culminate in the perception of the universe as a whole, with man as its center.”

Hans Hofmann

'Excerpts from the Teaching of Hans Hofmann', p. 61
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Universe

Hans Hofmann Quotes

“Monumentality is an affair of relativity. The truly monumental can only come about by means of the most exact and refined relation between parts. Since each thing carries both a meaning of its own and an associated meaning in relation to something else — its essential value is relative. We speak of the mood we experience when looking at a landscape. This mood results from the relation of certain things rather than from their separate actualities. This is because objects do not in themselves possess the total effect they give when interrelated.”

Hans Hofmann

'Excerpts from the Teaching of Hans Hofmann', p. 68
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Mood , Parting

“Then [speaking of his loosely figurative work of the 1930's, in Germany] I was still under nature, not that I was imitating it; now [1957] I am above nature. But everything comes from nature, I too am part of nature; my memory comes from nature, too.”

Hans Hofmann

Quote in: 'Hans Hofmann', Elizabeth Pollet, (interview of his 1957 Whitney Museum exhibition), Arts Magazine, May 1957 (article: 30-33)
1950s

Nature , Memory , Parting

“Dreams and reality are united in our imagination. The artist possesses the means to create only after he has effective command of his faculty of empathy which he must develop simultaneously with his imaginative capacity.”

Hans Hofmann

'Excerpts from the Teaching of Hans Hofmann', p. 61
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Dreams , Imagination , Reality

“The knowledge of reality, achieved by means of the complete sensory equipment, must be expressed artistically in terms of a medium which appeals to the memory of all sensory experience — but only through the eye.”

Hans Hofmann

'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 54
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Knowledge , Reality , Memory

“as quoted in Jackson Pollock, Ellen G Landau, p. 259, as quoted in Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, Ines Janet Engelmann, Prestel Verlag Munich, 2007, p. 66”

Hans Hofmann

1970s and later

Quotes

“It makes no difference whether a work is naturalistic or abstract; every visual expression follows the same fundamental laws.”

Hans Hofmann

'Excerpts from the Teaching of Hans Hofmann', p. 61
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Law

“Being inexhaustible, life and nature are a constant stimulus for a creative mind.”

Hans Hofmann

1970s and later

Life , Nature

“There is a world of visual beauty open to the one willing to undergo the practice and striving necessary to the understanding of its language.
This world is a important as culturally as is the world of words or of music. My ideal is to form and to paint as Schubert sings his songs and as Beethoven creates his world in sounds. That is to say, creation of one’s own inner world through the same human and artistic discipline.
An inner sensation can find external expression only through spiritual realization.”

Hans Hofmann

'Painting and Culture' p. 58
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

World , Beauty , Music , Understanding

“The impulse of nature, fused through the personality of the artist by laws arising from the particular nature of the medium, produces the rhythm and the personal expression of a work. Then the life of the composition becomes a spiritual unity.”

Hans Hofmann

'Painting and Culture' p. 58
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Life , Law , Nature , Personality

“Sometimes I wonder, laying in a great black stripe on a canvas, what animal bones (or horns) are making the furrows of my picture… black grows deeper and deeper, darker and darker before me. It menaces me like a black gullet. I can bear it no longer. It is monstrous. It is unfathomable. As the thought comes to me to exorcise and transform this black with a white drawing, it has already become a surface.”

Hans Hofmann

Robert Motherwell, in a catalog note to the show Black or White (1950)
Misattributed

Animals , Drawing

“Each expression-medium has a life of its own. Regulated by certain laws, it can be mastered only by intuition during the act of creating. It is in the nature of the laws which govern every expression medium that two separate entities, related through empathy, always produce a higher third of a purely spiritual nature. This spiritual third manifests itself as a quality which carries emotional content. This quality is the opposite of illusion; it is the reality of the spirit.”

Hans Hofmann

'Excerpts from the Teaching of Hans Hofmann', p. 61
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Life , Law , Nature , Reality

“The physical carrier is overshadowed by a relation. The relation creates an overtone. The physical carrier is absorbed by this overtone. The overtone spontaneously transforms the means of creation into a spiritual reality. The mystery of creation is then revealed.”

Hans Hofmann

'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 49
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Reality

“Quote in: 'Hans Hofmann', (1986) by Cynthia Goodman, p. 103”

Hans Hofmann

1970s and later

Quotes

“As a teacher I approach my students purely with the human desire to free them from all scholarly inhibitions, and I tell them, 'Painters must speak through paint — not through words.”

Hans Hofmann

As quoted in It ls., No. 3 (Winter-Spring 1959)
1950s

Teachers , Painting

“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.”

Hans Hofmann

'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 45
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Law , Color , Problem

“It isn't necessary to make things large to make them monumental; a head by Giacometti one inch high would be able to vitalize this whole space.”

Hans Hofmann

As quoted in Can Painting be Taught by Dorothy Seckler, Art News No. 50 (March 1951), p. 64
1950s

“I can't understand how anyone is able to paint without optimism. Despite the general pessimistic attitude in the world today, I am nothing but an optimist.”

Hans Hofmann

As quoted in The Artist's Voice : Talks With Seventeen Modern Artists (1962) by Katharine Kuh, p. 119
1960s

World , Optimism , Understanding , Painting

“A line cannot control pictorial space absolutely. A line may flow freely in and out space, but cannot independently create the phenomenon of push and pull necessary to plastic creation. Push and pull are expanding and contracting forces which are activated by carriers in visual motion. Planes are the most important carriers, lines and points less so... the picture plane reacts automatically in the opposite direction to the stimulus received; thus action continues as long as it receives stimulus in the creative process. Push answers with pull and pull with push. … At the end of his life and the height of his capacity Cézanne understood color as a force of push and pull. In his pictures he created an enormous sense of volume, breathing, pulsating, expanding, contracting through his use of colors.”

Hans Hofmann

'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 44
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Life , Color , Sense

“The impressionistic method leads into a complete splitting and dissolution of all areas involved in the composition, and color is used to create an overall effect of light. The color is, through such a shading down from the highest light in the deepest shadows, sacrified an degraded to a (black-and-white) function. This leads to the destructions of the color as color.”

Hans Hofmann

Hofmann's quote in: 'Space pictorially realized through the intrinsic faculty of the colors to express volume' in New Paintings by Hans Hofmann (1951); also in Hans Hofmann (1998) by Helmut Friedel and Tina Dickey
1950s

Color , Light

“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.”

Hans Hofmann

'Painting and Culture' p. 58
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Art , Soul

“Art is something absolute, something positive, which gives power just as food gives power.
While creative science is a mental food, art is the satisfaction of the soul.”

Hans Hofmann

'Painting and Culture' p. 56
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Food , Art , Soul , Science

“A work based only on a line concept is scarcely more than a illustration; it fails to achieve pictorial structure. Pictorial structure is based on a plane concept. The line originates in the meeting of two planes … we can lose ourselves in a multitude of lines, if through them we lose our senses for the planes.”

Hans Hofmann

'Terms' p. 71
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Sense

“Since light is best expressed through differences in color quality, color should not be handled as a tonal gradation, to produce the effect of light.”

Hans Hofmann

'Terms' p. 74
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Color , Light

“The difference between the arts arises because of the difference in the nature of the mediums of expression and the emphasis induced by the nature of each medium. Each means of expression has its own order of being, its own units.”

Hans Hofmann

'Painting and Culture' p. 57
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Art , Nature

“It takes intelligence and training, self-discipline and fine-sensibility, to gain renewed life through leisure occupation. America now suffers spiritual poverty, and art must become more fully American life before her leisure can become culture.”

Hans Hofmann

'Painting and Culture' p. 56
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Life , Art , Intelligence , Suffering

“The product of movement and counter-movement is tension. When tension — working strength — is expressed, it endows the work of art with the living effect of coordinated, though opposing, forces.”

Hans Hofmann

"Excerpts from the Teaching of Hans Hofmann", p. 66
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Art

“"Now I have lost all fear, and begin to draw on the black surface'" (Arp). Only love — for painting, in this instance — is able to cover the fearful void.”

Hans Hofmann

Robert Motherwell, partly quoting Jean Arp, in Motherwell & black (1981) p. 94 -->
Misattributed

Love , Fear , Drawing , Painting

“Art is magic. So say the surrealists. 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. To worship the product and ignore its development leads to dilettantism and reaction. Art cannot result from sophisticated, frivolous, or superficial effects.”

Hans Hofmann

'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 40
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Truth , Art , Reality

“A glimpse heavenward at a constellation or even at a single star only suggests infinity; actually our vision is limited. We cannot perceive unlimited space; it is immeasurable. The universe, as we know it through our visual experience, is limited. It first came into existence with the formation of matter, and will end with the complete dissolution of matter.<!-- I TRIMMED this portion to simply cut down a little on quotes from this one essay. ~ 2009·03·21 02:36 Kalki} Where there is matter and action, there is space. Pictorial space exists two dimensionally. When the two dimensionality of a picture is destroyed, it falls into parts — it creates the effect of a naturalistic space. When a picture conveys only naturalistic space, it represents a special case, a portion of what is felt about three-dimensional experience. This expression of the artist’s experience is thus incomplete.”

Hans Hofmann

'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 40-48
'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 43
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Quotes , Star , Universe , Parting

“At the time of making a picture, I want not to know what I am doing.; a picture should me made with feeling, not with knowing.”

Hans Hofmann

Quote from an interview with w:Elaine de Kooning, 'Hans Hofmann paints a picture', 1950; in Artnews, February 1950, 38 (article 38-41 and 58-59)
1950s

Feeling , Time

“The reciprocal relation of color to color produces a phenomenon of a more mysterious order. This new phenomenon is psychological. A high sensitivity is necessary in order to expand color into the sphere of the surreal without losing creative ground. Color stimulates certain moods in us. It awakens joy or fear in accordance with its figuration. In fact, 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.”

Hans Hofmann

'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 45
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

World , Fear , Art , Color

“A work of art is a world in itself reflecting senses and emotions of the artist's world.
Just as a flower, by virtue of its existence as a complete organism is both ornamental and self-sufficient as to color, form, and texture, so art, because of its singular existence is more than mere ornament.”

Hans Hofmann

'Excerpts from the Teaching of Hans Hofmann', p. 59
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

World , Art , Color , Flowers

“The creative process lies not in imitating, but in paralleling nature — translating the impulse received from nature into the medium of expression, thus vitalizing this medium. The picture should be alive, the statue should be alive, and every work of art should be alive.”

Hans Hofmann

'Painting and Culture' p. 55
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)