Eugène Delacroix cytaty

strona 2

„Dzieło zrobione dla ludzi znajdzie zawsze ludzi, którzy potrafią je ocenić.”

„Książka wielkiego człowieka jest kompromisem pomiędzy nim a czytelnikiem.”

„Nie należy wszystkiego pokazywać. Wydaje się, że jest to trudniejsze w malarstwie, gdzie umysł przejmuje to tylko, co oczy dostrzegają. Poeta bez trudu poświecą lub pomija milczeniem to, co drugorzędne. Największą sztuką malarza jest zwrócić uwagę na to jedynie, co potrzebne.”

„Tym, co inspiruje pracę geniusza, nie są nowe pomysły, lecz raczej obsesja, że wyjaśnienie nie jest wystarczające.”

„Trzeba zawsze trochę zepsuć obraz, żeby go skończyć.”

„Niepowodzenie przywraca ludziom wszystkie cnoty, jakie pomyślność im odbiera.”

„Godność, poszanowanie własnego charakteru, idą w parze z pewnym stopniem dobrobytu.”

„Prawdziwa wyższość nie dopuszcza żadnej ekscentryczności.”

„Geniusz to dar potężnej inwencji, dar uogólnienia i wyboru.”

„Doświadczenie jest niezbędne do nauczenia się wszystkiego, czego dokonać można swoim instrumentem, ale zwłaszcza do unikania tego, na co nie należy się porywać.”

„Nie mówi się nigdy za długo, gdy się mówi to, co powiedzieć trzeba.”

„Dobrze jest rozróżnić rozmaite plany, obrysowując je uważnie, ustalić porządek, w jakim występują ku światłu i odróżnić przed rozpoczęciem malowania te, które mają jednakowy walor.”

„Kobiety kochałem do szaleństwa, ale wolność ceniłem sobie bardziej.”

„Gdybym nie miał farb, malowałbym błotem.”

„Jest się mistrzem dopiero wtedy, kiedy przykłada się do rzeczy cierpliwość, której wymagają.”

„Dni, których się nie zapisało, są jak niebyłe.”

„Aby realizm nie był słowem pozbawionym sensu, wszyscy ludzie musieliby mieć jednaki umysł i jednaki sposób pojmowania.”

„Nie ma prostych linii w naturze.”

„Człowiekiem szczęśliwym jest ten, który zdobył swe szczęście.”

„Mercey powiedział nam rzecz wielką w swojej książce o Wystawie: „Piękno w sztuce to prawda idealizowana”. Rozstrzygnął kwestię sporną pomiędzy pedantami i prawdziwymi artystami.”

“I believe it safe to say that all progress must lead, not to further progress, but finally to the negation of progress, a return to the point of departure.”

“We are told that Shakespeare's plays were generally performed in barns and that no great trouble was taken over the production. The constant changes of scene which, incidentally, seem the sign of a decadent art rather than one which is progressing, were shown by placards with the inscription: "A Forest," "A Prison," and so on. Within this conventional setting the onlooker's imagination was free to follow the actions of the various characters who were animated by passions drawn from nature, and that was enough for him. So-called innovations are gratefully seized on as an excuse for poverty of invention and in the same way, the long descriptive passages that so overburden modern novels are a sign of sterility, for it is obviously easier to describe a dress or the outward appearance of an object than to trace the subtle development of a character or portray the emotions of the heart.”

“One should always be desiring or hoping for something. When one can hope for that which one desires, one enjoys the greatest happiness of which our thinking apparatus is capable. To obtain what one has been desiring is the first step to the depths of sadness and even pain, from which one can never emerge. The sea still enchants me; I linger for three or four hours at a time on the jetty or at the edge of the cliffs. Impossible to tear oneself away. If I could lead such a life for a certain time, coupling it with some interesting occupation, I should enjoy excellent health.”

“They say that each generation inherits from those that have gone before; if this were so there would be no limit to man's improvements or to his power of reaching perfection. But he is very far from receiving intact that storehouse of knowledge which the centuries have piled up before him; he may perfect some inventions, but in others, he lags behind the originators, and a great many inventions have been lost entirely. What he gains on the one hand, he loses on the other.”

“Well! A general invasion: Hamlet rears his hideous head, Othello is preparing his dagger, that essentially murderous weapon, subversive of all good theatrical government. What more, who knows... King Lear is to tear his eyes before a French audience. It should be a point of dignity for the Academy to declare that all imports of this kind are incompatible with public morals. Farewell good taste! In any case, equip yourself with a stout coat of mail under your evening dress. Beware of the Classicist's daggers, or rather, sacrifice yourself valiantly for our barbarian pleasure..”

“For his contemporaries, Racine was a romantic, but for every age he is classical, that is to say, he is faultless.”

“Proportion applies to sculpture as to painting; perspective determines the contour; chiaroscuro gives relief through the disposition of lights and shadows in their relationship with the background; color gives the appearance of life... The colorists, the men who unite all the phases of painting, have to establish, at once and from the beginning, everything that is proper and essential to their art. They have to mass things in with color, even as the sculptor does with clay, marble or stone; their sketch, like that of the sculptor, must also render proportion, perspective effect, and color.”

“In every art we are always obliged to return to the accepted means of expression, the conventional language of the art. What is a black-and-white drawing but a convention to which the beholder has become so accustomed that with his mind's eye he sees a complete equivalent in the translation from nature?”

“Criticism, like so many other things, keeps to what has been said before and does not get out of the rut. This business of the 'Beautiful' some see it in curved lines, some in straight lines, but all persist in seeing it as a matter of line. I am now looking out of my window and I can see the most lovely countryside; lines just do not come into my head: the lark is singing, the river sparkles with a thousand diamonds, the leaves are whispering; where, I should like to know, are the lines that produce delicious impressions like these? They refuse to see proportion or harmony except between two lines: all else they regard as chaos, and the dividers alone are judge.”

“Constable, an admirable man, is one of England's glories. I have already told you about him and about the impression he had made on me when I was making 'The massacre at Chios'. He and Turner were real reformers. They broke out of the rut of traditional landscape painting. Our School [ French Romanticism ], which today abounds in men of talent in this field, profited greatly by their example. Géricault [first leader of French Romanticism, followed by Delacroix after his early death] came back in a daze from seeing one of the great landscapes Constable sent us.”

“Curiously enough, the Sublime is generally achieved through want of proportion.”

“After leaving [the International Exposition in Paris, with a lot of new machines], I went to see Courbet's exhibition; he has reduced the admission to ten cents. I stay there alone for nearly an hour and discover that the picture [ 'L'atélier' / the Painter's Studio - 1855] of his which they refused [for exposing on the official Salon in Paris ] is a masterpiece; I simply could not tear myself away from the sight of it.”

“Mythological subjects always new. Modern subjects difficult because of the absence of the nude and the wretchedness of modern costume.”

“He [ Michelangelo ] did not know a single one of the feelings of man, not one of his passions. When he was making an arm or a leg, it seems as if he were thinking only of that arm or leg and was not giving the slightest consideration to the way it relates with the action of the figure to which it belongs, much less to the action of the picture as a whole... Therein lies his great merit; he brings a sense of the grand and the terrible into even an isolated limb.”

“Weaknesses in men of genius are usually an exaggeration of their personal feeling; in the hands of feeble imitators they become the most flagrant blunders. Entire schools have been founded on misinterpretations of certain aspects of the masters. Lamentable mistakes have resulted from the thoughtless enthusiasm with which men have sought inspiration from the worst qualities of remarkable artists because they are unable to reproduce the sublime elements in their work.”

“If you make the light dominate too much, the breadth of the planes leads to the absence of half tints, and consequently to discoloration; the opposite abuse is harmful above all in big compositions destined to be seen from a distance, like ceilings, etc. In the latter form of painting, Paul Veronese goes beyond Rubens through the simplicity of his local color and his breadth in handling the light... Veronese had greatly to strengthen his local color in order that it should not appear discolored when immunized by the very broad light he threw on it.”

“Nature creates unity even in the parts of a whole.”

“One has to see a painter in his own place to get an idea of his worth. I went back there [to Corot's studio, after the official exhibition] and I appreciate in a new light the paintings that I had seen in the Museum and that had struck me as middling... He told me to go a bit ahead of myself, abandoning myself to whatever might come; this is how he works most of the time... Corot delves deeply into a subject; ideas come to him and he adds while working; it's the right approach.”

“In the midst of the activities that distract me [shooting partridges in the woods], when I remember a few lines of poetry, when I recall some sublime painting, my spirit is roused to indignation and spurns the vain sustenance of the common herd. And in the same way, when I think of those I love, my soul clings eagerly to the elusive trace of these cherished ideas. Yes, I am sure of it, great friendship is like great genius, and the remembrance of a great and enduring friendship is like that of great works of genius… What a life would be that of two great poets who loved each other as we do! That would be too great for human kind.”