“A musician once said: In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer understands what one is doing or what one knows, and when there remains an energy that is all the stronger for being constrained, controlled and compressed. It is therefore necessary to present oneself with the greatest humility: white, pure and candid with a mind as if empty, in a spiritual state analogous to that of a communicant approaching the Lord's Table. Obviously it is necessary to have all of one's experience behind one, but to preserve the freshness of one's instincts.”

— Henri Matisse

Un musicien a dit: en art la vérité, le réel commence quand on ne comprend plus rien à ce qu'on fait, à ce q'uon sait, et qu'il reste en vous une énergie d'autant plus forte qu'elle est contrariée, compressée, comprimée. Il faut alors se présenter avec la plus grande humilité, tout-blanc, tout pur, candide, le cerveau semblant-vide, dans un état d'esprit analogue à celui du communiant approchant la Sainte Table. Il faut évidemment avoir tout son acquis derrière soi et avoir su garder la fraîcheur de l'Instinct.
1940s, Jazz (1947)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Feb. 14, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A musician once said: In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer understands what one is doing or what one know…" by Henri Matisse?

Henri Matisse 60

French artist 1869–1954

Related quotes

“To know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility…”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Source: Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

“We are all created to be miserable, and that we all know it, and all invent means of deceiving each other. And when one sees the truth, what is one to do?”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

“What a variety of shapes exists in the lithograph when one prepares the stone for printing, etches it, and prints oneself. Above all, one must do the printing oneself!”

Max Pechstein (1881–1955) German artist

quote, c. 1920; in Buchheim, Künstlergemeinschaft Brücke, p. 303; as cited in 'The Revival of Printmaking in Germany', I. K. Rigby; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, pp. 40-41

“It is an undoubted truth, that the less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in. One yawns, one procrastinates, one can do it when one will, and therefore one seldom does it at all.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

Letter
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

“It is necessary to protect oneself from over exaggeration; one must not suppose that there exists, even in the realm of partial memory, an absolutely pure auditory type; real life does not make such schemas… In reality, when one says that a person belongs to the auditory type… one wants to say simply that with regard to that person the auditory memory is preponderant.”

Alfred Binet (1857–1911) French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test

Alfred Binet (1894). Psychologies des grands calculateurs et joueurs d’echecs. Paris: Hachette. p. 71; As cited in: John Carson, "Minding matter/mattering mind: Knowledge and the subject in nineteenth-century psychology." in: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C. 30.3 (1999): p. 363