Pablo Picasso citations

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“Quand je n'ai pas de bleu, je mets du rouge.”

“Comme l'a dit un jour Picasso, au grand scandale des gens qui l'entouraient — Je ne cherche pas, je trouve.”

“L'art lave notre âme de la poussière du quotidien.”

“L'art n'est pas chaste […], on devrait l’interdire aux ignorants innocents, ne jamais mettre en contact avec lui ceux qui y sont insuffisamment préparés. Oui, l'art est dangereux. Ou s'il est chaste, ce n'est pas de l'art.”

“On met très longtemps à devenir jeune.”

“Les gloires, les trompettes, les palmes… et les bas-reliefs,… tout cela fait un monument.”

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”

“Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.”

“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”

“We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies. If he only shows in his work that he has searched, and re-searched, for the way to put over lies, he would never accomplish anything.”

“The world doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?”

“There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.”

“[Speaking of computers] But they are useless. They can only give you answers.”

“It's like God's. God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things.”

“If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.”

“To draw, you must close your eyes and sing”

“Youth has no age.”

“When I don't have red, I use blue.”

“I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.”

“I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else. After all, what is a painter? He is a collector who gets what he likes in others by painting them himself. This is how I begin and then it becomes something else.”

“He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.”

“What one does is what counts. Not what one had the intention of doing.”

“Give me a museum and I'll fill it.”

“All art is erotic.”

“Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.”

“Every positive value has its price in negative terms… the genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.”

“Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.”

“Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not melt in one's bath.”

“We don't grow older we grow riper.”

“The artist is a receptacle for emotions derived from anywhere: from the sky, from the earth, from a piece of paper, from a passing figure, from a spider’s web. This is a spider's web. This is why one must not make a distinction between things. For them there are no aristocratic quarterings. One must take things where one finds them.”

“What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who only has eyes, if he is a painter, or ears if he is a musician, or a lyre in every chamber of his heart if he is a poet, or even, if he is a boxer, just his muscles? Far from it: at the same time he is also a political being, constantly aware of the heartbreaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. How could it be possible to feel no interest in other people, and with a cool indifference to detach yourself from the very life which they bring to you so abundantly? No, painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.”

“Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction." ― Pablo Picasso”

“Anything new, anything worth doing, can't be recognized.”

“There is only one way to see things,
until someone shows us how to look at them
with different eyes”

“The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world.”