“They speak of naturalism in opposition to modern painting. I would like to know if anyone has ever seen a natural work of art. Nature and art, being two different things, cannot be the same thing. Through art we express our conception of what nature is not. Velasquez left us his idea of the people of his epoch. Undoubtedly they were different from what he painted them, but we cannot conceive a Philip IV in any other way than the one Velasquez painted…”

— Pablo Picasso

Paris 1923
As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 312
Quotes, 1920's

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Pablo Picasso 128

Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stag… 1881–1973

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“Being an artist now means to question the nature of art. If one is questioning the nature of painting, one cannot be questioning the nature of art. If an artist accepts painting (or sculpture) he is accepting the tradition that goes with it. That’s because the word art is general and the word painting is specific. Painting is a kind of art. If you make paintings you are already accepting (not questioning) the nature of art. One is then accepting the nature of art to be the European tradition of a painting-sculpture dichotomy.”

Joseph Kosuth (1945) American conceptual artist

Joseph Kosuth in: Arthur R. Rose, “Four Interviews,” Arts Magazine (February, 1969).

“.. and then it remains you to re-create your study, the fragment, into a painting. For remember; these are two [different] things: Nature is the material from which we must take. But don't be fooled by the modern theories, that imitating, copying nature would be 'everything'. The goal, the Art's aim is …. to move..”

Willem Roelofs (1822–1897) Dutch painter and entomologist (1822-1897)

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
(original Dutch: citaat van Willem Roelofs, in het Nederlands:) ..en dan blijft u over, om de studie, het fragment, tot schilderij te herscheppen. Want vergeet niet, dat dat twee [verschillende] dingen zijn: De natuur is de stof, waaruit wij moeten putten. Maar laat u niet door de moderne (Jeltes: hij bedoelde hier waarschijnlijk de Belgische neo-impressionistische) theoriën wijsmaken, dat het navolgen, het copieeren der natuur 'alles' is. Het doel, het streven van de Kunst is.. ..te ontroeren..
Quote of Roelofs, in a letter to his pupil Frans Smissaert, 8 June 1886; as cited in Willem Roelofs (1822—1922), by Mr. H. F. W. Jeltes, in Maandschrift Elsevierweekblad... http://maandschrift.elsevierweekblad.nl/EGM/1922/01/19220101/EGM-19220101-0268/story.pdf, Jan. 1922, p. 222
1880's

“.. that distinguished aesthete [ Gustave Moreau, ] famous artist and art teacher in Paris, then] who paints nothing than rubbish, it is because his dreams are suggested not by the inspiration of Nature, but by what he has seen in the museums... I should like to have that good man under my wing, to point out to him the doctrine of a development of art by contact with Nature. It's so sane, so comforting, the only just conception of art.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

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

“The interval during which a painting is mistaken for the real thing, or a real thing for a painting, is the triumphant moment of trompe l'oeil art. The artist appears to be potent as nature, if not superior to it. Almost immediately, though, the spectator's uncertainty is eliminated by his recognition that the counterfeit is counterfeit. Once the illusion is dissolved, what is left is an object that is interesting not as a work of art but as a successful simulation of something that is not art. The major response to it is curiosity: "How did he do it?"”

Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978) American writer and art critic

Source: Art on the Edge, (1975), p. 237-9, "Reality Again: The New Photorealism"

“Artists have never worked with the model – just with the painting. What you [G. R. Swenson, the interviewer] are really saying is that an artist like Cézanne transforms what we think the painting ought to look like into something he thinks it ought to look like. He’s working with paint, not nature; he’s making a painting, he's forming. I think my work is different from comic strips – but I wouldn't call it transformation; I don't think that whatever is meant by it is important to art. What I do is form, whereas the comic strip is not formed in the sense I’m using the word; the comics have shapes but there has been no effort to make them intensely unified. The purpose is different, one intends to depict and I intend to unify.”

Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997) American pop artist

Source: 1960's, What is Pop Art? Interviews with eight painters' (1963), pp. 25-27

“The first thing to change in my painting was the color [c. 1908-09]. I forsook natural color for pure color. I had come to feel that the colors of nature cannot be reproduced on canvas. Instinctively I felt that painting had to find a new way to express the beauty of nature.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote of Mondrian about 1905-1910; in 'Mondrian, Essays' ('Plastic art and pure plastic art', 1937 and his other essays, (1941-1943) by Piet Mondrian; Wittenborn-Schultz Inc., New York, 1945, p. 10; as cited in De Stijl 1917-1931 - The Dutch Contribution to Modern Art, by H.L.C. Jaffé http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/jaff001stij01_01/jaff001stij01_01.pdf; J.M. Meulenhoff, Amsterdam 1956, p. 40

“I like the description 'Physical art'. I think maybe art emerged when man first began to distinguish himself from nature. Art is part of himself, which he returns perhaps as an homage to the nature which he left. Of course, he never left nature. The rise of consciousness, perhaps... The main thing we believe, that separated us from not only animals but from the stones, is the fact that we are not stones, that we are not dogs. Now that is an assumption, perhaps it's a false assumption. But anyway, somehow I think one of the greatest functions of art is that man can feed back to his own consciousness through the knowledge that he is not a stone or not a dog.”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

December 1969; quote from a talk with his audience
Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 12

“Nature moves me deeply; I paint nature (now) only in a different way..”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote of P. Mondrian, 1919-20; as cited in Gedurende een wandeling van buiten naar de stad. Dialoog en Trialoog over de Nieuwe Beelding, ed. H. Henkels; Haags Gemeentemuseum Den Haag 1986, p. 24
1910's

“I believe that one should not think so much about nature when painting, at least not during the conception of the picture. Make the color sketch exactly as one has felt something in nature. But my personal feeling is the main thing. Once I have established it, lucid in tone and color, I must bring in from nature the things that make my painting seem natural, so that a layman will only think that 1 have painted it from nature.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

quote from her Diaries, 1 October, 1902; as cited in Expressionism, a German intuition, 1905-1920, Neugroschel, Joachim; Vogt, Paul; Keller, Horst; Urban, Martin; Dube, Wolf Dieter; (transl. Joachim Neugroschel); publisher: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1980, p. 31
1900 - 1905

“Art is something given, not reproduced… the painter paints what he sees with his innermost senses, the expression of his being.. every other impression becomes, for him, an inner expression.”

Herwarth Walden (1878–1941) German artist

Erster Deutscher Herbstsalaon (1913)

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Pablo Picasso 128

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