As quoted in The Quotable Artist (2002) by Peggy Hadden, p. 71.
As quoted in The Quotable Artist (2002) by Peggy Hadden, p. 72.
undated quotes
Variant: They who are compelled to paint by force, without being in the necessary mood, can produce only ungainly works, because this profession requires an unruffled temper.
“Painting it's a blind man profession. Painter is painting not what he sees but what he feels.”
Portuguese Notes (Gandon Editions Biography 1993).
Context: Not to paint is the highest ambition of the painter but God who gives the gift requires that it be honoured. It is in the gesture that it lives. There is no escape. Picture-making is ludicrous in the light of the awful times we must endure. It is sufficient to contemplate the nature of composition to see that the picture itself is impossible. Each square inch of Titian contains the whole pointless — between the cradle and the grave. My paintings are merely signs that the activity was engaged in.
Quoted in Brian Sherwin, "Art Space Talk: James Rosenquist," http://www.myartspace.com/blog/2008/04/art-space-talk-james-rosenquist.html myartspace.com (2008-04-04)
“A great portrait is always more a portrait of the painter than of the painted.”
Portraits
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books
Joint statement with Adolph Gottlieb, to Edwin A. Jewell, often referred to as a Manifesto. (written 7 June 1943; published 13 June 1943)
1940's
"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.
“A painter paints his pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.”
Addressing an audience at Carnegie Hall, as quoted in The New York Times (11 May 1967); often this is quoted without the humorous final sentence.
Context: A painter paints his pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. We provide the music, and you provide the silence.
Kandinsky is remembering his experience that he saw one of the 'Haystack' paintings of Monet, for the first time in his life, in Moscow (1895)
Source: 1916 -1920, Autobiography', 1918, p. 10
You know? He painted it and that was it.
Miles of Aisles (1974)
