“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
Quote attributed to Picasso in TIME, October 4, 1976, Modern Living: Ozmosis in Central Park http://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/03/07/child-art/ http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,918412,00.html
Disputed
Variant: All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”
Quoted in: Peter Erskine, Rick Mattingly (1998), Drum Perspective, p. 73.
Alternative forms:
"At eight, I was Raphael", he used to say. "It took me a whole lifetime to paint like a child"
From Picasso, my grandfather, Marina Picasso (2001).
Attributed from posthumous publications
“For me, there are two kinds of women — goddesses and doormats.”
Quoted in: Briton Hadden, Henry Robinson Luce (1969), Time, Vol. 93. p. 66.
1960s
As quoted in Life with Picasso, by François Gilot, 1964, p. 60
1940s
“I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”
Attributed in Civilization's Quotations : Life's Ideal (2002) by Richard Alan Krieger, p. 132, and many places on the internet, this was actually stated by Vincent van Gogh in a letter to Anthon van Rappard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthon_van_Rappard (18 August 1885) http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let528/letter.html, also rendered "I keep on making what I can’t do yet in order to learn to be able to do it."
Misattributed
Variant: I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
Quoted in: LIFE http://books.google.com/books?id=9EgEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA9, Vol. 57, nr. 11 (11 September 1964). p. 9.
1960s
“The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.”
Attributed by Banksy on Instagram (October 6, 2018): "The urge to destroy is also a creative urge" - Picasso https://www.instagram.com/p/BomXijJhArX/?hl=en&taken-by=banksy. This was actually written by anarchist philosopher Mikhail Bakunin in his essay "Reaction in Germany," in 1842.
Source: Moore, John (2004). I Am Not a Man, I Am Dynamite!: Friedrich Nietzsche and the Anarchist Tradition. Brooklyn NY: Autonomedia. p. 87.
Source: Lehning, Arthur, ed. (1973). Mikhail Bakunin: Selected Writings. London: Cape. p. 58.
Misattributed
“Good artists copy, great artists steal.”
Compare: "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal." T. S. Eliot, in Philip Massinger, in The Sacred Wood (1920)
Disputed