“I have many ideas for lights. I will paint only lights at night. [on the twinkling city-lights]”
Mark Tobey (1890–1976) American abstract expressionist painter
Quote from Tobey's letter to the cubist painter Feininger, 1955
1950's
Context: In studying the problem of the painting of Christ's figure, I found it to be the painting of the great problem of life. To me He was the bringer of light to the darkness of the world. Many of the French artists wished to find the light in Nature. I wished to find the light within the figure that I was presenting. In Christ I grasped the embodiment of the outward and the inward light. I wished to bring things out of the darkness, as Rembrandt found all things through light.
“I have many ideas for lights. I will paint only lights at night. [on the twinkling city-lights]”
Mark Tobey (1890–1976) American abstract expressionist painter
Quote from Tobey's letter to the cubist painter Feininger, 1955
1950's
“I don't paint cows but light”
Willem Maris (1844–1910) Dutch landscape painter of the Hague School (1844-1910)
version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Willem Maris: Ik schilder geen koeien, maar licht. <br class="br">2 short Quotes of Willem Maris, c. 1880; as cited in 'Schilder Maris' http://www.wittebrugpark.nl/wittebrugpark/schilders/maris/maris.htm (translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)
Sydney Carter (1915–2004) British musician and poet
George Fox
Context: There's an ocean of darkness and I drown in the night
till I come through the darkness to the ocean of light,
for the light is forever and the light it is free,
"And I walk in the glory of the light," said he.
James Mattis (1950) 26th and current United States Secretary of Defense; United States Marine Corps general
Source: Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead (2019), p. 42
Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch (1824–1903) Dutch painter of the Hague School (1824-1903)
version in original Dutch / citaat van J. H. Weissenbruch, in het Nederlands: Licht en lucht, dat is de kunst! Ik kan in m'n schilderijen, vooral in de luchten, nooit licht genoeg brengen.. .De lucht op een schilderij, dat is een ding! Een hoofdzaak! Lucht en licht zijn de groote toovenaars. De lucht bepaalt het schilderij. Schilders kunnen nooit genoeg naar de lucht kijken. Wij moeten het van boven hebben.
Quote of J. H. Weissenbruch; as cited in J.H. Weissenbruch 1824-1903, ed. E. Jacobs, H. Janssen & M. van Heteren; exposition-catalog, Museum Jan Cunen / Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Zwolle 1999, pp. 227-233
Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer
Pupils at Sais (1799)
Context: I. The Pupil. — Men travel in manifold paths: whoso traces and compares these, will find strange Figures come to light; Figures which seem as if they belonged to that great Cipher-writing which one meets with everywhere, on wings of birds, shells of eggs, in clouds, in the snow, in crystals, in forms of rocks, in freezing waters, in the interior and exterior of mountains, of plants, animals, men, in the lights of the sky, in plates of glass and pitch when touched and struck on, in the filings round the magnet, and the singular conjunctures of Chance. In such Figures one anticipates the key to that wondrous Writing, the grammar of it; but this Anticipation will not fix itself into shape, and appears as if, after all, it would not become such a key for us. An Alcahest seems poured out over the senses of men. Only for a moment will their wishes, their thoughts thicken into form. Thus do their Anticipations arise; but after short whiles, all is again swimming vaguely before them, even as it did.