“I am not an action painter. Each painting is an act. The result of action and the fulfillment of action... No painting stops with itself, is complete of itself. It is a continuation of previous paintings and is renewed in successive ones..”

—  Clyfford Still

Gallery Notes, Allbright-Knox Art Gallery, Vol. 24 summer 1961 pp. 9-14; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 197
1960s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I am not an action painter. Each painting is an act. The result of action and the fulfillment of action... No painting …" by Clyfford Still?
Clyfford Still photo
Clyfford Still15
American artist 1904–1980

Related quotes

Amelia Earhart photo

“No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another.”

Amelia Earhart (1897–1937) American aviation pioneer and author

Originally Frederick William Faber, sermon "On Kindness in General", found in Spiritual Conferences, a collection of his oratory, ca. 1860
Misattributed
Context: No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves.

Leonardo Da Vinci photo

“Painting embraces and contains within itself all the things which nature produces or which results from the fortuitous actions of men… he is but a poor master who makes only a single figure well.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), XXIX Precepts of the Painter

“If I am lucky, the picture will paint itself”

Julian Trevelyan

Quoted in Insights by Liz rideal, National Portrait Gallery, London 2005 ISBN 1855143631

Jawaharlal Nehru photo

“I want to go rapidly towards my objective. But fundamentally even the results of action do not worry me so much. Action itself, so long as I am convinced that it is right action, gives me satisfaction.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

Statement of 1951, in Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru Vol. 5 (1987), p. 321
Context: I want to go rapidly towards my objective. But fundamentally even the results of action do not worry me so much. Action itself, so long as I am convinced that it is right action, gives me satisfaction. In my general outlook on life I am a socialist and it is a socialist order that I should like to see established in India and the world.

Patrick Swift photo

“The Art of painting is itself an intensely personal activity… a picture is a unique and private event in the life of the painter”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

"The Painter in the Press", X magazine, Vol. I, No.4 (October 1960).
Context: The Art of painting is itself an intensely personal activity… a picture is a unique and private event in the life of the painter: an object made alone with a man and a blank canvas... A real painting is something which happens to the painter once in a given minute; it is unique in that it will never happen again and in this sense is an impossible object... And it is something which happens in life not in art: a picture which was merely the product of art would not be very interesting and could tell us nothing we were not already aware of. The old saying, “what you don’t know can’t hurt you”, expresses the opposite idea to that which animates the painter before his canvas. It is precisely what he does not know which may destroy him.

Marshall McLuhan photo

“If a work of art is to explore new environments, it is not to be regarded as a blueprint but rather as a form of action-painting.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

To Wilfred Watson, October 6 1965. Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987), p. 325
1960s

“[to see the painting].. as an object, as a real thing in itself. (quote on his Flag-paintings)”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

Quote from: Abstract Art, Anna Moszynska, Thames and Hudson 1990, p. 200
1950s

Antoine François Prévost photo

“The portrait I have to paint is of…an ambiguous character, a mixture of virtues and vices, a perpetual contrast between good impulses and bad actions.”

Antoine François Prévost (1697–1763) French novelist

J'ai à peindre…un caractère ambigu, un mélange de vertus et de vices, un contraste perpétuel de bons sentiments et d'actions mauvaises.
Avis de l'auteur, p. 30; translation p. 3.
L'Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut (1731)

“People have success with this method and it gets them excited. It gets them hooked. You can put layers of thick paint on thin paint and that allows you to complete a painting in one sitting.”

Bob Ross (1942–1995) American painter, art instructor, and television host

Source: Mike Flannagan (October 1, 1992) "TV Artist Bob Ross Watches Paint Dry, Turns It Into a Successful Career", The Knoxville News-Sentinel, p. B1.

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti photo

“.. a member of anarchist and revolutionary circles, attracted in turn by violent action and by dream, before resolving to dedicate him to painting.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) Italian poet and editor, founder of the Futurist movement

describing Boccioni
In the 'Preface' of Boccioni's show at Ca' Pesaro, July 1910; as quoted in Inventing Futurism: The Art and Politics of Artificial Optimism, by Christine Poggi, Princeton University Press, 2009, p. 107
1900's

Related topics