“The Pointillist chooses a means of expression by which he applies colour on a canvas in small dots rather than spreading it flat.”

—  Paul Signac

From Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism, 1899

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The Pointillist chooses a means of expression by which he applies colour on a canvas in small dots rather than spreadin…" by Paul Signac?
Paul Signac photo
Paul Signac 9
French painter 1863–1935

Related quotes

Piet Mondrian photo

“I believe that in our period it is definitely necessary that, as far as possible, the paint is applied in pure colours, set next to each other in a pointillist or diffuse manner. This is stated strongly, and yet it relates to the idea which is the basis of meaningful expression in form, as I see it. It seems to me that the clarity of ideas should be accompanied by a clarity of technique.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote in Mondrian's letter to Israel Querido, Summer of 1909; published in the weekly magazine 'De Controleur' 23 Oct, 1909; as cited in English translation, in Two Mondrian sketchbooks 1912 - 1914, ed. Robert P. Welsh & J. M. Joosten, Amsterdam 1969 p. 10
1900's

“At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act-rather than as a space in which to reproduce, re-design, analyze or express an object, actual or imagined. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event.”

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

"The American Action Painters" (1952) in Art News 51/8, Dec. 1952, p. 22; then published in Tradition of the New, 1959.

Arshile Gorky photo

“Yes, Johannes Vermeer [Dutch 17th century master painter] paints in thin layers – there is no waste effort – and those small dots – no, they are not like Seurat's, though they contain all the light the pointillist may have wished for, concentrated, hovering before the object, but not obliterating it... Vermeer is not a sun painter, but rather a moon-painter – like Uccello – that's good, it is the pure, final stage of art, the moment when it becomes more real than reality.”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

Source: 1942 - 1948, Arshile Gorky, – Goats on the roof' (2009), pp. 357-58: in: 'A visit to the Metropolitan Museum with Gorky', Ethel Schwabacher]], 1947

Julien Offray de La Mettrie photo

“[T]he sciences that are expressed by numbers or by other small signs, are easily learned; and… this facility rather than its demonstrability is what has made the fortune of algebra.”

Julien Offray de La Mettrie book Man a Machine

p, 125
Man a Machine (1747)

Aldous Huxley photo

“Unless we choose to decentralize and to use applied science, not as the end to which human beings are to be made the means, but as the means to producing a race of free individuals, we have only two alternatives to choose from”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Foreword to the 1946 edition
Brave New World (1932)
Context: Unless we choose to decentralize and to use applied science, not as the end to which human beings are to be made the means, but as the means to producing a race of free individuals, we have only two alternatives to choose from: either a number of national, militarized totalitarianisms, having as their root the terror of the atomic bomb and as their consequence the destruction of civilization (or, if the warfare is limited, the perpetuation of militarism); or else one supra-national totalitarianism, called into existence by the social chaos resulting from rapid technological progress in general and the atomic revolution in particular, and developing, under the need for efficiency and stability, into the welfare-tyranny of Utopia. You pays your money and you takes your choice.

William Henry Channing photo

“To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion: to he worthy, not respectable; and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly”

William Henry Channing (1810–1884) American Unitarian clergyman, writer and philosopher

"Symphony", in Memoir of William Henry Channing (1886) by Octavius Brooks Frothingham, p. 166.
Context: To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion: to he worthy, not respectable; and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to have an oratory in my own heart, and present spotless sacrifices of dignified kindness in the temple of humanity; to spread no opinions glaringly out like show-plants, and yet leave the garden gate ever open for the chosen friend and the chance acquaintance: to make no pretenses to greatness; to seek no notoriety; to attempt no wide influence; to have no ambitious projects; to let my writings be the daily bubbling spring flowing through constancy, swelled by experiences, into the full, deep river of wisdom; to listen to stars and buds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never; … in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.

Max Beckmann photo

“Colour, as the strange and magnificent expression of the inscrutable spectrum of Eternity, is beautiful and important to me as a painter; I use it to enrich the canvas and to probe more deeply into the object. Colour also decided, to a certain extent, my spiritual outlook, but it is subordinated to life, and above all, to the treatment of form. Too much emphasis on colour at the expense of form and space would make a double manifestation of itself on the canvas, and this would verge on craft work.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

Source: 1930s, On my Painting (1938), pp. 18-19

Theo van Doesburg photo

“Plastic expression in architecture is inconceivable without colour. Colour and light complete one another. Without colour architecture is expressionless, blind... If the Functionalists wish to suppress colour completely, then this merely proves that they never understood the importance of colour as an ‘architectural’ element, as a means of plastic expression, no matter whether used with iron, glass, or concrete.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote in van Doesburg's his article: 'Space – time and colour', in 'De Stijl', Aubette Issue, series xv, 87-9, 1928, pp. 26–27
1926 – 1931

Wassily Kandinsky photo

“.. I let myself go.. [in Kandinsky's Murnau-period when he was painting in open air; c. 1908 – 1914] I thought little of the houses and trees, but applied colour stripes and spots to the canvas with the knife and made them sing out as strongly as I could. Within me sounded the memory of early evening in Moscow, before my eyes was the strong, colour-saturated scale of the Munich light and atmosphere, which thundered deeply in the shadows.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

'..stripes and spots with the knife', as he learned then also Gabriele Münter - they frequently painted together in open air
Source: 1916 -1920, Autobiography', 1918, p. 31

Pierre Soulages photo

“I have always thought that he more limited the means, the stronger the expression. That may explain the choice of a small palette.”

Pierre Soulages (1919) French painter and engraver

Quoted in Cultural Hermeneutics: Essays after Unamuno and Ricoeur https://books.google.com/books?id=qBb8CwAAQBAJ&pg=PT180&lpg=PT180&dq=The+more+limited+the+means+are,+the+stronger+the+expression+will+be.+soulages&source=bl&ots=Z6zlqNBJ5Z&sig=m-Dv6ErGf9KmcjngVgOdJQXZxEk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwicmcvE9cLcAhVoZN8KHbVlDwEQ6AEwAnoECAAQAQ#v=onepage&q=The%20more%20limited%20the%20means%20are%2C%20the%20stronger%20the%20expression%20will%20be.%20soulages&f=false

Related topics