“The most important tool the artist fashions through constant practice is the faith in his ability to produce miracles when they are needed. Pictures must be miraculous; the instant one is completed, the intimacy between the creation and the creator is ended. He is an outsider. The picture must be for him, as for anyone experiencing it later, a revelation, an unexpected and unprecedented resolution of an eternally familiar need.”
Source: after 1970, posthumous, Abstract Expressionism, Creators and Critics', 1990, p. 168
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Mark Rothko36
American painter 1903–1970Related quotes
“If the artist did not know his goal, even the most miraculous of tools could not find it for him.”
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Attributed to Rodin in: Southwestern Art Vol. 6 (1977). p. 20; Partly cited in: A Toolbox for Humanity: More Than 9000 Years of Thought (2004) by Lloyd Albert Johnson, p. 7
1930s and later
Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)
18 March 1857
Correspondence, Letters to Mademoiselle Leroyer de Chantepie
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The Dagger with Wings (1926)
Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter
Quote in a letter from The Hague, 19 Feb. 1886, to collector / friend Dr. John Forbes White in Aberdeen; as cited in Jozef Israëls, 1824 – 1911, ed. Dieuwertje Dekkers; Waanders, Zwolle 1999, Bijlage 2., p. 363
Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1871 - 1900
Jacques Barzun (1907–2012) Historian
Interview with John C. Tibbetts http://www.murphywong.net/barzuncentennial/JohnCTibbetts.htm (1986-12-04)
Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist
1920s
Source: 'Merz. Für den Ararat geschrieben' (1920); as quoted in Kurt Schwitters, das literarische Werk, ed. Friedhelm Lach, Dumont Cologne, 1973–1981, Vol. 5 p. 77.
Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist
In a letter to Mr. Clifford, February 14, 1948; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson , London, 1963, p. 238
1940s