Juan Gris Quotes (6 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Juan Gris: 6 quotes1 like

Famous Juan Gris Quotes

“I always pet a dog with my left hand, because if he bit me, I'd still have my right hand to paint with.”

Attributed by Max Jacob (1876–1944) to Juan Gris, quoted in: Jeanine Warnod (1972). Washboat days. p. 204

“Cubism is not a manner but an aesthetic, and even a state of mind; it is therefore inevitably connected with every manifestation of contemporary thought. It is possible to invent a technique or a manner independently, but one cannot invent the whole complexity of a state of mind.”

Juan Gris

Response to a questionnaire, from "Chez les cubistes," Bulletin de la Vie Artistique, ed. Félix Fénéon, Guillaume Janneau et al (1925-01-01); trans. Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Juan Gris, His Life and Work (1947)

“Cézanne made a cylinder out of a bottle. I start from the cylinder to create a special kind of individual object. I make a bottle — a particular bottle — out of a cylinder.”

Juan Gris

Response to questionnaire circulated to the Cubists by Amédée Ozenfant and Le Corbusier, editors of L'Esprit Nouveau # 5 (February 1921), pp. 533-534; trans. Douglas Cooper in Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Juan Gris, His Life and Work (1947)

“No work which is destined to become a classic can look like the classics which have preceded it. In art, as in biology, there is heredity but no identity with the ascendants. Painters inherit characteristics acquired by their forerunners; that is why no important work of art can belong to any period but its own, to the very moment of its creation. It is necessarily dated by its own appearance. The conscious will of the painter cannot intervene.”

Juan Gris

Quote from 'On the Possibilities of Painting,' lecture, Sociétés des études philosophiques et scientifiques pour l'examen des idées nouvelles, Sorbonne, Paris (1924-05-15), printed in the Transatlantic Review, # 16 (June 1924), pp. 482-488; trans. Douglas Cooper in Horizon, # 80 (August 1946), pp. 113-122

“I try to make concrete that which is abstract.”

Juan Gris

Response to questionnaire circulated to the Cubists by Amédée Ozenfant and Le Corbusier, editors of L'Esprit Nouveau # 5 (February 1921)

“Painting for me is like a fabric, all of a piece and uniform, with one set of threads as the representational, esthetic element, and the cross-threads as the technical, architectural, or abstract element. These threads are interdependent and complementary, and if one set is lacking the fabric does not exist.A picture with no representational purpose is to my mind always an incomplete technical exercise, for the only purpose of any picture is to achieve representation.”

Juan Gris

Quote from 'On the Possibilities of Painting,' lecture, Sorbonne (1924-05-15)