“Slowly I discovered the secret of my art. It consists of a meditation on nature, on the expression of a dream which is always inspired by reality.”
"Interview with Henri Matisse" by Jacques Guenne, L'Art Vivant (15 September 1925), translated by Jack Flam in Matisse on Art (1995)
1921 - 1940
Context: Slowly I discovered the secret of my art. It consists of a meditation on nature, on the expression of a dream which is always inspired by reality. With more involvement and regularity, I learned to push each study in a certain direction. Little by little the notion that painting is a means of expression asserted itself, and that one can express the same thing in several ways. Exactitude is not truth, Delacroix liked to say.
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Henri Matisse 60
French artist 1869–1954Related quotes
Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
“My whole teaching consists of two words, meditation and love.”
Come, Come, Yet Again Come
Context: My whole teaching consists of two words, meditation and love. Meditate so that you can feel immense silence, and love so that your life can become a song, a dance, a celebration. You will have to move between the two, and if you can move easily, if you can move without any effort, you have learned the greatest thing in life.
“Every time my dreams threaten to become reality, something always happens and I end up alone.”
Source: Swapping Lives
The Social History of Art, Volume I. From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages, 1999, Chapter IV. The Middle Ages
“Fire Lookout: Numa Ridge”, p. 57
The Journey Home (1977)
Source: The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West
“I am living permanently in my dream, from which I make brief forays into reality.”
Source: Images: My Life in Film
Quoted from a biographical note written by Tatlin in 1929, published in Tatlin', Weingarten; Kunstverlag Weingarten, 1987), p. 328; as quoted by Vasilii Rakitin, in The great Utopia - The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932; Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1992, p. 34
Quotes, 1926 - 1954
Quote in a conversation with Vollard, in the studio of Cézanne, in Aix, 1896; as quoted in Cezanne, by Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 66
Quotes of Paul Cezanne, 1880s - 1890s