Quotes about colors
page 13

“Scientific language that is correct and serious so far as teachers and students are concerned must follow these stylistic norms:
# Be as verbally explicit and universal as possible…. The effect is to make `proper' scientific statements seem to talk only about an unchanging universal realm….
# Avoid colloquial forms of language and use, even in speech, forms close to those of written language. Certain words mark language as colloquial…, as does use of first and second person…
# Use technical terms in place of colloquial synonyms or paraphrases….
# Avoid personification and use of specifically or usually human attributes or qualities…, human agents or actors, and human types of action or process…
# Avoid metaphoric and figurative language, especially those using emotional, colorful, or value laden words, hyperboles and exaggeration, irony, and humorous or comic expressions.
# Be serious and dignified in all expression of scientific content. Avoid sensationalism.
# Avoid personalities and reference to individual human beings and their actions, including (for the most part) historical figures and events….
# Avoid reference to fiction or fantasy.
# Use causal forms of explanation and avoid narrative and dramatic accounts…. Similarly forbidden are dramatic forms, including dialogue, the development of suspense or mystery, the element of surprise, dramatic action, and so on.”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Source: Talking Science: Language, Learning, and Values. 1990, p. 133-134, as cited in: Mary U. Hanrahan, "Applying CDA to the analysis of productive hybrid discourses in science classrooms." (2002).

Teachers, Universe, Parting, Personality

“In a time of sickness with the pleurisy, a little upward of two years and a half ago, I was brought so near the gates of death that I forgot my name. Being then desirous to know who I was, I saw a mass of matter of a dull, gloomy color, between the south and the east; and was informed that this mass was human beings in as great misery as they could be and live; and that I was mixed in with them, and that henceforth I might not consider myself as a distinct or separate being. In this state I remained several hours. I then heard a soft, melodious voice, more pure and harmonious than any I had heard with my ears before; I believed it was the voice of an angel, who spake to the other angels. The words were: “John Woolman is dead.””

John Woolman (1720–1772) American Quaker preacher

I soon remembered that I once was John Woolman, and being assured that I was alive in the body, I greatly wondered what that heavenly voice could mean. Source: The Journal of John Woolman (1774), p. 164 ( online http://books.google.nl/books?id=qPspAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA164)

Death, Angels, Time, Dead

“Let Christians act out their religion, and there is no more race problem. Equality for the colored man is coming. The colored people are showing themselves worthy of it. Let the colored be industrious, purchase homes, respect law and order, educate themselves and their children, and keep insisting on their rights.”

John Ireland (bishop) (1838–1918) Catholic bishop

Sermon at St. Augustine Catholic Church (1890)

Children, People, Education, Religion

“A man's right to speak does not depend upon where he was born or upon his color. The simple quality of manhood is the solid basis of the right - and there let it rest forever.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1880s, Plea for Free Speech in Boston (1880)

Dependency

“I'll be in Detroit two more weeks. I would like to tell you every thing that happened to me since the last time we saw each other, but most of them are sad and you mustn't know sad things now. After all I shouldn't complain because I have been happy in many ways though. Diego is good to me, and you can't imagine how happy he has been working on the frescoes here. I have been painting a little too and that helped. I thought of you a lot and never forget your wonderful hands and the color of your eyes. I will see you soon. I am sure that in New York I will be much happier. If you still in the hospital when I come back I will bring you flowers.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

Quote of Kahlo, in her letter to Georgia O'Keeffe, 1 March 1933, from http://www.patronofthearts.com/2015/07/frida-kahlos-letter-to-georgia-okeefe/ 1925 - 1945

Happiness, Sadness, Way, Imagination

“We are in the process of seeing the fulfillment of Edgar Allan Poe's prophecy in which the painter, impassioned by his mistress-model and also by his art, "did not want to see that the colors he spread on his canvas were taken from the cheeks of the woman seated beside him. And when several weeks had passed, and very little remained to be done, nothing but a stroke on the mouth and a glaze over the eye, the mistress’s spirit still flickered like the flame at the base of a lamp. Then he put on the final touch, put the glaze in place, and for a moment the painter stood in ecstasy before the work he had finished. But a moment later, he was struck with panic, and shouting with a piercing voice: ‘It is truly Life itself,’ he suddenly turned around to look at his mistress. She was dead."”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

Nothing ever constrains us to face what is dying when we see it so alive in our images.
J. Hanks, trans. (1985), p. 208
The Humiliation of the Word (1981)

Life, Art, Dead

“I would love to paint a large landscape of Moscow — taking elements from everywhere and combining them into a single picture—weak and strong parts, mixing everything together in the same way as the world is mixed of different elements. It must be like an orchestra... Suddenly I felt that my old dream was closer to coming true. You know that I dreamed of painting a big picture expressing joy, the happiness of life and the universe. Suddenly I feel the harmony of colors and forms that come from this world of joy.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote from Kandinsky's letter to Gabriele Münter, June 1916; as cited in lrike Becks-Malorny, Wassily Kandinsky, 1866–1944: The Journey to Abstraction [Cologne: Taschen, 1999], pp. 115, 118
Kandinsky left Münter and Murnau in 1914, because the first World War started and Kandinsky had a Russian nationality
1916 -1920

Love, Life, Happiness, World

“The reciprocal relation of color to color produces a phenomenon of a more mysterious order. This new phenomenon is psychological. A high sensitivity is necessary in order to expand color into the sphere of the surreal without losing creative ground. Color stimulates certain moods in us. It awakens joy or fear in accordance with its figuration. In fact, the whole world, as we experience it visually, comes to us through the mystic realm of color. Our entire being is nourished by it. This mystic quality of color should likewise find expression in a work of art.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 45
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

World, Fear, Art, Mood

“Bran said, “Why should some of the riders of the Dark be dressed all in white and the rest all in black?”
“Without color….” Will said reflectively. “I don’t know. Maybe because the Dark can only reach people at extremes—blinded by their own shining ideas, or locked up in the darkness of their own heads.””

Susan Cooper (1935) English fantasy writer

Source: The Dark Is Rising (1965-1977), Silver on the Tree (1977), Chapter 10 “The Rose-Garden” (p. 146)

People, Idea

“A programming language is like a natural, human language in that it favors certain metaphors, images, and ways of thinking. The language used strongly colors the computer culture. It would seem to follow that educators interested in using computers and sensitive to cultural influences would pay particular attention to the choice of language. But nothing of the sort has happened. On the contrary, educators… have accepted certain programming languages in much the same way as they accepted the QWERTY keyboard. An informative example is the way in which the programming language BASIC has established itself as the obvious language to use in teaching children how to program computers… Today, and in fact for several years now, the cost of computer memory has fallen to the point where any remaining economic advantages of using BASIC are insignificant. Yet in most high schools, the language remains almost synonymous with programming, despite the existence of other computer languages that are demonstrably easier to learn and are richer in the intellectual benefits that can come from learning them. The situation is paradoxical. The computer revolution has scarcely begun, but is already breeding its own conservatism.”

Seymour Papert book Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas

Source: Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas (1980), Chapter 1, Computers and Computer Cultures

Children, Education, School, Way

“All the proper balances of our daily life are disturbed, everything we do is colored by the underlying thought of "that."”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

33
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Life

“A work of art is a world in itself reflecting senses and emotions of the artist's world.
Just as a flower, by virtue of its existence as a complete organism is both ornamental and self-sufficient as to color, form, and texture, so art, because of its singular existence is more than mere ornament.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Excerpts from the Teaching of Hans Hofmann', p. 59
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

World, Art, Flowers, Sense

“Anita, I have just come the comforting conclusion that I'll have to paint acres and acres of water color landscapes before I will look for even a passably fair one. After about ten attempts — I certainly have to laugh at myself — It's like feeling around in the dark — thought I knew what I was going to try to do but I find I don't — and guess I'll only find out by slaving away at it. I feel — like a wreck — Have been working like mad all day — and you know how deliciously disgusted with every thing one can be — when the sun begins to go down — and one has been working ones head off all day. It gives me the sensation I used to have when I was a youngster and was going away from home on the train — It is a very special sort of sick feeling.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

New York City (February 1916), p. 145
1910s, Letters to Anita Pollitzer' (1916)

Feeling, Home, Water, Sun

“My response was that more than half of Israelis are of Sephardic origin. Many of these Jews come from Arab lands and share the same physical skin color.”

Natalie Portman (1981) Israeli-American actress

On allegations of racism in Israel Interview, Jewish Chronicle, 6 July 2007 http://thejc.com/home.aspx?AId=44797&ATypeId=1&search=true2&srchstr=Natalie%20Portman&srchtxt=1&srchhead=1&srchauthor=1&srchsandp=1&scsrch=0

“A painter works to formulate with or in colors... My paintings follow the second option.”

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

Source: De tweede Helft Ad de Visser, SUN Nijmegen, The Netherlands, 1998, p. 123

Painting

“The matter of color is more confusing. Not every property of a system can be stated as a definite spatio-temporal state of affairs. A system's tendency, for instance, to move from State A to State B, but not from State B to State A... a tendency like this is not any specific event which you can point to in space and time. These nonspecific properties correspond to overall gestalts in the Hilbert Space coloring. Alternating bands of red and green light might, for example, represent a particle which is moving from left to right but which has no specific location. A good mood could be a golden haze not tied to any particular cause.”

Rudy Rucker (1946) American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

Source: The Sex Sphere (1983), p. 134

Mood, Light, Time

“The author has the reputation of being against color. I am indeed against color when it masks incompetence; when it allows the superimposition of characteristics to the point of absurdity; when people believe it capable of representing ordered data.”

Jacques Bertin (1918–2010) French geographer and cartographer

Source: Graphics and graphic information processing (1981), p. 222; partly cited in: Laura R. Novick and Sean M. Hurley (2001) " To Matrix, Network, or Hierarchy: That Is the Question http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/faculty/Markman/PSY394/NovHur.pdf" in: Cognitive Psychology 42, 158–216 (2001)

People

“It is utterly hypocritical for Congress to extol the virtues of a color-blind society while officially sanctioning caucuses that are based solely on race and restrict their membership based on race.”

Tom Tancredo (1945) American politician

Tom Tancredo to Juanita Millender-MacDonald http://tancredo.house.gov/media/2007.01.25%20Tancredo%20to%20House%20Administration.pdf. (January 25, 2007).

“I know a girl;
She puts the color inside of my world.
But she's just like a maze
Where all of the walls all continually change.
And I've done all I can
To stand on her steps with my heart in my hands.
Now I'm starting to see
Maybe it's got nothing to do with me.Fathers, be good to your daughters,
Daughters will love like you do.
Girls become lovers who turn into mothers,
So mothers, be good to your daughters too.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

Daughters
Song lyrics, Heavier Things (2003)

Love, World, Girl, Lovers

“By the oath I have taken "to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," duty directs — and strong personal conviction impels — that I advise the Congress that action is necessary, and necessary now, if the Constitution is to be upheld and the rights of all citizens are not to be mocked, abused and denied. I must regretfully report to the Congress the following facts:
1. That the Fifteenth Amendment of our Constitution is today being systematically and willfully circumvented in certain State and local jurisdictions of our Nation.
2. That representatives of such State and local governments acting "under the color of law," are denying American citizens the right to vote on the sole basis of race or color.
3. That, as a result of these practices, in some areas of our country today no significant number of American citizens of the Negro race can be registered to vote except upon the intervention and order of a Federal Court.
4. That the remedies available under law to citizens thus denied their Constitutional rights — and the authority presently available to the Federal Government to act in their behalf — are clearly inadequate.
5. That the denial of these rights and the frustration of efforts to obtain meaningful relief from such denial without undue delay is contributing to the creation of conditions which are both inimical to our domestic order and tranquillity and incompatible with the standards of equal justice and individual dignity on which our society stands.
I am, therefore, calling upon the Congress to discharge the duty authorized in Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment "to enforce this Article by appropriate legislation."”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Special message to Congress on the right to vote (1965)

Justice, Law, Effort, Strong

“Told, during the days of segregation in the US, that he couldn't be served as he was trying to take breakfast at a restaurant "for colored folk", he insisted: "But we are colored, my dear. We are pink."”

Pierre Monteux (1875–1964) French conductor

From Monteux, Fifi (1962). Everyone is Someone. New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy. OCLC 602036672, pp. 13–15

“Avoiding all control, I spread out sheets of white paper or canvas in the nature. For some time they stay in the grass, in the rushes of river, in the meadows or among the rocks. Nature registers its presence, covering the surface of the paper with colors, forms and tracks. This process is controlled by a number of agents; such as space and time, substance and causality. It is governed by nature's intensity. It does not, depend on man's interference. Nature is the greatest and most admirable creator, and unlike logic it doesn't fail. The artist obligation is not to shape - handicraft, but to understand the riddles of reality. In such conception of Art there lies, as in the Universe itself, an immense richness, and a countless variety of forms.”

Jacek Tylicki (1951) American artist

Catalogue to exhibition in Gallery 38 - Copenhagen, 1976, as cited in: Leszek Brogowski & Dorota Czerner (transl.). Jacek Tylicki: Art and Artworks. 2014

Art, Understanding, Nature, Reality

“I sure do like the color brown. And pink. Pink and brown. If I had to choose, pink would lose.”

Vincent Gallo (1961) American film director, writer, model, actor and musician

AOL Interview

“I have been to [gallery] Hagen, saw two Matisses, which enchanted me. A large collection of Japanese masks. Sublime! 'Neue [Künstler] Vereinigung' were hung in a bad light.... Kandinsky, Jawlensky, Bechteleff and Erbslöh have immense artistic sensibility. But the means of expression are to big for what they have to say. The sound of their voice is so good, so fine, that what is being said get lost. Consequently a human element is missing. They concentrate, too much, I think, on form. There is much to be learnt from their efforts. But early things by Kandinsky, and a few by Jawlensky too, seem a little empty to me. And Jawlensky's heads looked at me a little bit too much with colors. With blue and green. I hope you understand what I mean.”

August Macke (1887–1914) German painter of the expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter

in a letter to Franz Marc, 26 December 1910; as quoted by de:Wolf-Dieter Dube, in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 137

Hope, Understanding, Thinking, Effort

“Corps, division, and post commanders will afford all facilities for the completion of the Negro regiments now organizing in this department. Commissioners will issue supplies, and quarter-masters will furnish stores, on the same requisitions and returns as are required for other troops. It is expected that all commanders will especially exert themselves in carrying out the policy of the Administration, not only in organizing colored regiments and rendering them efficient, but also in removing prejudices against them.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

Order to corps, division, and post commanders https://books.google.com/books?id=wqJBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=%22but+also+in+removing+prejudices+against+them%22+%22grant%22&source=bl&ots=zG336mXnGl&sig=GPSCXL3D9zfrVo9I7G2ZcBv2j_o&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCgQ6AEwA2oVChMI3KSiwcSkxwIVi6CACh1v9gF-#v=onepage&q=%22but%20also%20in%20removing%20prejudices%20against%20them%22%20%22grant%22&f=false, Milliken's Bend, Louisiana. 1860s

“The negro. These developments have brought about a very remarkable improvement in the condition of the negro race. Gradually, but surely, with the almost universal sympathy of those among whom they live, the colored people are working out their own destiny. I firmly believe that it is better for all concerned that they should be cheerfully accorded their full constitutional rights, that they should be protected from all of those impositions to which, from their position, they naturally fall a prey, especially from the crime of lynching and that they should receive every encouragement to become full partakers in all the blessings of our common American citizenship.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

People, Nature, Universe

“As a student of Franz von Stück he Kandinsky still continued for a while to paint quite naturalistically. He admitted to me that he had always loved color, even as a child, far more than subject matter. Form and color were his main interests. To me he often remarked that 'objects disturb me.”

Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) German painter

But he could paint portraits, too.
Source: Interview by Edouard Roditi (1958), p. 116

Love, Painting

“The impressions we receive, which often appear merely chaotic, consist of three elements; the impression of the color of the object, its form, and of its combined color and form, i. e., of the object itself. At this point the individuality of the artist comes to the front and disposes, as he wills, these three elements. It is clear, therefore, that the choice of object (i. e., of one of the elements in the harmony of form) must be decided only by a corresponding vibration in the human soul..”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote of Kandinsky, Munich, 1910; as cited in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 450
1910 - 1915

Soul, Appearance

“For some time now it has been clear that intermedia art is trending toward that point at which all the phenomena of life on earth will constitute the artist’s palette. It is the purpose of this chapter to illuminate the direction of that trend and to cite a few pertinent examples. As with all other Paleocybernetic phenomena, the direction is simultaneously toward inner and outer space, the microcosm and the macrocosm. On the one hand, intermedia environments turn the participant inward upon himself, providing a matrix for psychic exploration, perceptual, censorial, and intellectual awareness; on the other hand technology has advanced to the point at which the whole earth itself becomes the “content” of aesthetic activity. The term “light show” must now be expanded virtually to include the aurora borealis, since hemispherical lumia displays are possible in the creation of artificial plasma clouds in space (see color plates), the launching of rockets to generate atmospherical events, or urban environmental generators such as Nicholas Schoffer’s monumental Cybernetic Light Tower, which transforms the skies of Paris into panoramic fantasias of color.”

Gene Youngblood book Expanded Cinema

Source: Expanded Cinema, 1970, p. 348; The Artist as Ecologist http://www.screeningthepast.com/2011/11/the-artist-as-ecologist/

Life, Art, Light, Time

“willow of crystal, a poplar of water,
a pillar of fountain by the wind drawn over,
tree that is firmly rooted and that dances,
turning course of a river that goes curving,
advances and retreats, goes roundabout,
arriving forever:
the calm course of a star
or the spring, appearing without urgency,
water behind a stillness of closed eyelids
flowing all night and pouring out prophecies,
a single presence in the procession of waves
wave over wave until all is overlapped,
in a green sovereignty without decline
a bright hallucination of many wings
when they all open at the height of the sky, course of a journey among the densities
of the days of the future and the fateful
brilliance of misery shining like a bird
that petrifies the forest with its singing
and the annunciations of happiness
among the branches which go disappearing,
hours of light even now pecked away by the birds,
omens which even now fly out of my hand, an actual presence like a burst of singing,
like the song of the wind in a burning building,
a long look holding the whole world suspended,
the world with all its seas and all its mountains,
body of light as it is filtered through agate,
the thighs of light, the belly of light, the bays,
the solar rock and the cloud-colored body,
color of day that goes racing and leaping,
the hour glitters and assumes its body,
now the world stands, visible through your body,
and is transparent through your transparency”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Sun Stone (1957)

Fate, Happiness, World, Mountain

“This is what happens, unquestionably – I am positive: an optical sensation is produced in our visual organ, which leads us classify as light, half-tone or quarter-tone, the planes represented by sensations of color. [Thus the light does not exist for the painter]. As long as, inevitably, one proceeds from black to white, the former of these abstractions being a kind of point of rest both for eye and brain, we flounder about, we cannot achieve self-mastery, get possession of ourselves. During this period (I tend to repeat myself, inevitably) we turn to the admirable works [of the five great Venetian painters a. o. Titian and Tintoretto] handed down to us through the ages, in which we find comfort and support…”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Quote from Cézanne's letter to Émile Bernard, 23 December 1904; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 184
Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900

Age, Support, Light

“He [ Hans Hofmann one of her art teachers] would come up to me [1937-38], look at my work, and do a critique half in English and half in German, but certainly nothing I could understand. When he left the room I would call George McNeil, who was then the monitor, over and I would ask: 'What did this man say to me?' Hoffman was teaching Cubism and that was pretty exciting. Matisse and Picasso were my highlights. It was as though I was swinging between them. First I started to work with color and then there was a heavy swing toward the linear.”

Lee Krasner (1908–1984) American artist

Source: Art Talk, Conversations with 15 woman artists 1975, p. 73.

Art, Understanding, Teachers

“Topography displays no favorites; North's as near as West.
More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' colors.”

Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979) American poet

Poem: The Map
Poems, North and South (1946)

“If I have problems perceiving a color I don't know who to go to – an opthamologist, a neurologist, or a computer programmer.”

Neil Harbisson (1984) Catalan-Irish musician, artist and activist

As quoted in KPCC (14 May 2013). "Cyborg Neil Harbisson can hear in color" http://www.scpr.org/programs/airtalk/2013/05/13/31774/cyborg-neil-harbisson-listens-to-color/

Problem

“The rights of all private property owners, even those whose actions decent people find abhorrent, must be respected if we are to maintain a free society… Federal bureaucrats and judges cannot read minds to see if actions are motivated by racism. Therefore, the only way the federal government could ensure an employer was not violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was to ensure that the racial composition of a business's workforce matched the racial composition of a bureaucrat or judge's defined body of potential employees… Racial quotas have not contributed to racial harmony or advanced the goal of a color-blind society. Instead, these quotas encouraged racial balkanization, and fostered racial strife… Relations between the races have improved despite, not because of, the 1964 Civil Rights Act.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

The Trouble With the '64 Civil Rights Act
LewRockwell.com
2004-06-03
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul188.html
2000s, 2001-2005

People, Way, Motivation, Business

“The relationship of volumes, lines, and colors demands absolute orchestration and order. These values are all unquestionable influential; they have extended into modern objects such as airplanes, automobiles, farm machines, etc. Today we are in competition with the 'beautiful object'; it is undeniable. Sometimes its plastic qualities make it beautiful in itself and consequently unusable; one can only fold one's arms and admire it. There is also today an astonishing art of window display. Certain store windows are highly organized spectacles... If, pushing things to extremes, the majority of manufactured objects and 'stored spectacles' were beautiful and had plasticity, we artists would no longer have any reason to exist.”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Quote from 'Notes on Contemporary Plastic Life', in 'Kunstblatt', Berlin 1923; as quoted in The documents of 20th century art – Functions of Painting by Fernand Léger, in Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1973, pp. 24-25
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1920's

Beauty, Art

“The first and most important thing to understand about politics is this: forget Right, Left, Center, socialism, fascism, or democracy. Every government that exists — or ever existed, or ever will exist — is a kleptocracy, meaning 'rule by thieves'. Competing ideologies merely provide different excuses to separate the Productive Class from what they produce. If the taxpayer/voters won't willingly fork over to end poverty, then maybe they'll cough up to fight drugs or terrorism. Conflicting ideologies, as presently constituted, are nothing more than a cover for what's really going on, like the colors of competing gangs.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Why Aren't We There Yet?"

Democracy, Understanding, Fight, Forgetting

“Depth, in a pictorial, plastic sense, is not created by the arrangement of objects one after another toward a vanishing point, in the sense of the Renaissance perspective, but on the contrary (and in absolute denial of this doctrine) by the creation of forces in the sense of push and pull. Nor is depth created by tonal gradation (another doctrine of the academician which, at its culmination, degraded the use of color to a mere function of expressing dark and light).”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 44
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Sense, Light

“No movement can claim to speak for all women unless it speaks for women who also face the consequences of racism, which places women of color overwhelmingly in the ranks of the working class and the poor. Race and class must be central to the project of women's liberation--not only in theory, but in practice--if it is to be meaningful to those women who are the most oppressed by the system.”

Sharon Smith (writer) (1956) American historian

A Marxist Case For Intersectionality (2017)

Women

“Never paint except with the three primary colors [red, blue, and yellow] and their derivatives.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Attributed to Pisarro, in Philip Ball (2001() Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color. p. 178
Advise to his students to lightening their palette and remove colours such as black, ocher and sienna
undated quotes

Painting

“I have not built any theory. I have only tried to build up sensitive eyes, as my book says. And I have tried to achieve that by aiming at very distinct color relationships again – like how do they influence each other? Change each other in light and in intensity, in transparency, opacity? How do they change each other in all different directions? That we make all the students aware, through experience, that color is the most relative medium in art, and that we never really see what we see. All neighboring means which occur every minute different, not only in changing light but also by our changing moods. And in the end, the study of color again is a study of ourselves.”

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

Homage to the square' (1964), Oral history interview with Josef Albers' (1968)

Books, Art, Mood, Study

“The relation between the white and colored people of this country is the great, paramount, imperative, and all-commanding question for this age and nation to solve.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech at the Church of the Puritans, New York City (May 1863)
1860s

People, Age, Question, Country

“The brushstroke, in painting, is purely and
simply what it is – rhythm,
color, matter.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

ATV, 187; p. 175
Karel Appel, a gesture of colour' (1992/2009)

Painting

“Rollerball is an incoherent mess, a jumble of footage in search of plot, meaning, rhythm and sense. There are bright colors and quick movement on the screen, which we can watch as a visual pattern that, in entertainment value, falls somewhere between a kaleidoscope and a lava lamp.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/rollerball-2002 of the 2002 film Rollerball (8 February 2002) Reviews, Half-star reviews

Search, Sense

“Well, I wish they had built a Funtown for colored.”

Yolanda King (1955–2007) American actress

Reluctantly accepting amusement park Funtown for being inaccessible to African-Americans quoted in Coretta: The Story of Coretta Scott King (2006) by Octavia B. Vivian, p. 56
1960s

“I'm not for profiling people on the color of their skin, or on their religion, but I would take into account where they've been traveling and perhaps, you might have to indirectly take into account whether or not they've been going to radical political speeches by religious leaders. It wouldn't be that they are Islamic. But if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that's really an offense that we should be going after — they should be deported or put in prison.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

The Sean Hannity Show
Radio
2011-04-27 quoted in * Rand Paul, Supposed Defender Of Civil Liberties, Calls For Jailing People Who Attend ‘Radical Political Speeches’
Alex
Seitz-Wald
2011-05-31
ThinkProgress
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/05/31/232182/rand-paul-criminalize-speech/
2011-06-02
2010s

People, Religion, Travel

“I was 'colored' until I was 14, a Negro until I was 21 and a black man ever since.”

Reggie Jackson (1946) American professional baseball player, outfielder, coach

"We Have A Serious Problem That Isn't Going Away" http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1065955/index.htm, Sports Illustrated, May 11, 1987.

“At last, here is a new man [ Millet ], who has the knowledge which I would like to have, and movement, color, expression, too, - here is a painter!”

Narcisse Virgilio Díaz (1807–1876) French painter

Quote of Diaz, 1844; as cited by fr:Alfred Sensier, in Jean-Francois Millet – Peasant and Painter, translated from the French original by Helena de Kay; publ. Macmillan and Co., London, 1881, p. 62
Diaz de la Peña gave this comment when he saw for the first time work of Millet: the painting 'The Riding Lessons' on the Paris' Salon of 1844
Quotes of Diaz

Knowledge

“It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin. This policy shall be put into effect as rapidly as possible, having due regard to the time required to effectuate any necessary changes without impairing efficiency or morale.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Executive Order 9981 (1948)

Religion, Change, Time, Personality

“We'll all turn black
So who's to know?
As a matter of fact,
Color, creed and breed must go.
There will be no light,
So there can be no sight.
And you'll judge your fellow man;
Understand bout what is right.
A million music, a million sound
There's neutral thoughts
For the underground.”

Curtis Mayfield (1942–1999) American singer, songwriter, and record producer

Underground, from Roots (1971).
Song lyrics

Music, Understanding, Light

“Traslation: Now it happens that turtles are great speed enthusiasts, which is natural.
The esperanzas know that and don't bother themselves about it.
The famas know it, and make fun of it.
The cronopios know it, and each time they meet a turtle, they haul out the box of colored chalks, and on the rounded blackboard of the turtle's shell they draw a swallow.”

Julio Cortázar (1914–1984) Argentinian writer

'Ahora pasa que las tortugas son grandes admiradoras de la velocidad, como es natural. Las esperanzas lo saben, y no se preocupan. Los famas lo saben, y se burlan. Los cronopios lo saben, y cada vez que encuentran una tortuga, sacan la caja de tizas de colores y sobre la redonda pizarra de la tortuga dibujan una golondrina.'
Historias de Cronopios y de Famas (1962)

Nature, Time, Drawing, Speed

“I was twenty-one at the time, about to turn twenty-two. No prospect of graduating soon, and yet no reason to quit school. Caught in the most curiously depressing circumstances. For months I'd been stuck, unable to take one step in any new direction. The world kept moving on; I alone was at a standstill. In the autumn, everything took on a desolate cast, the colors swiftly fading before my eyes. The sunlight, the smell of the grass, the faintest patter of rain, everything got on my nerves.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 1: Wednesday Afternoon Picnic

World, School, Autumn, Grass

“The reality is different. They are so matured as far as democracy is concerned, they rejected the color TV [promised by Congress]. They rejected the color TV, and they accepted a person who says that I'll serve the notice [to tax evaders]. And this is the strength of the democracy.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

2008, Speech, 14 January 2008

Democracy, Reality, Personality

“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.”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

Quote in Delacroix's Journal of 1850; as cited in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, pp. 230 – 231
1831 - 1863

Light, Appearance, Painting

“In a cupboard filled with books he came across one with brightly colored pictures — it was a child's illustrated alphabet — A is for Archer Who shoots with a bow. B is for Boy, His first name is Joe. The pictures interested him greatly.
There were many apes with faces similar to his own, and further over in the book he found, under "M," some little monkeys such as he saw daily flitting through the trees of his primeval forest. But nowhere was pictured any of his own people; in all the book was none that resembled Kerchak, or Tublat, or Kala.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 6 : Jungle Battles

People, Books, Boy, Tree

“The wide distribution of the Satem or Iranian group to the south and west of Asia shows that the Nordics in great numbers conquered the aboriginal inhabitants of these countries and imposed on them the Aryan speech. They invented the caste system to maintain the purity of their blood. In fact, the Hindu word "varna" means both color and caste. In spite of all their efforts, however, the conquering invaders died out almost completely in India and Persia — leaving behind them only their language, and, in some cases, their religion.”

Madison Grant (1865–1937) American lawyer, eugenicist, and conservationist

The Conquest of a Continent (1933)

Religion, Effort, Country

“There are only two races (and they are not distinguished by color): those who are free and those who are not.”

Gerry Spence (1929) American lawyer

Source: Give Me Liberty! (1998), Ch. 15 : Black and White Together, p. 168

“For ourselves, we firmly believe that the finger of Providence is pointing the way to all races, and colors, and nations, along the path that is to lead the east and the west alike to the great goal of human wants. Demons infest that path, and numerous and unhappy are the wanderings of millions who stray from its course; sometimes in reluctance to proceed; sometimes in an indiscreet haste to move faster than their fellows, and always in a forgetfulness of the great rules of conduct that have been handed down from above. Nevertheless, the main course is onward; and the day, in the sense of time, is not distant, when the whole earth is to be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, "as the waters cover the sea.
One of the great stumbling-blocks with a large class of well-meaning, but narrow-judging moralists, are the seeming wrongs that are permitted by Providence, in its control of human events. Such persons take a one-sided view of things, and reduce all principles to the level of their own understandings. If we could comprehend the relations which the Deity bears to us, as well as we can comprehend the relations we bear to him, there might be a little seeming reason in these doubts; but when one of the parties in this mighty scheme of action is a profound mystery to the other, it is worse than idle, it is profane, to attempt to explain those things which our minds are not yet sufficiently cleared from the dross of earth to understand.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

Preface
Oak Openings or The bee-hunter (1848)

Way, Understanding, Knowledge, Sense

“All this countryside [along the Seine] was calm and peaceful. The strongest emotions I have experienced on the high roads or on the hill tops whence I could see down into the valleys on tot he roofs of houses which I felt I could reach out and touch with my hand.. And then I was tempted to begin painting [c. 1893 - 17 years old]... I composed instinctively and awkwardly. I applied colors with only one idea which justified everything: to express what I felt. I painted hesitantly and exclusively for myself and no one else. It seemed to me that water, sky, clouds and trees understood the happiness they gave me.”

Maurice de Vlaminck (1876–1958) French painter

Source: Quotes dated, Dangerous Corner', 1929, p. 46

Happiness, Peace, Idea, Tree

“Graphic work as the expressive movement of the hand holding the recording pencil.... is so fundamentally different from dealing with tone and color that one can use this technique quite well in the dark, even in the blackest night. On the other hand, tone (movement from light to dark) presupposes some light, and color presupposes a great deal of light.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (1912), # 928, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, translation: Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary and Max Knight; publisher, University of California Press, 1964
1911 - 1914

Light, Night

“I am glad to be able to fortify my position on this point by the great name and ability of Theophilus Parsons, of the Harvard Law School. In discussing the necessity of negro suffrage at a recent public meeting in Boston, he says: "Some of the Southern States have among their statutes a law prohibiting the education of a colored man under a heavy penalty. The whole world calls this most inhuman, most infamous. And shall we say to the whites of those States, 'We give you complete and exclusive power of legislating about the education of the blacks; but beware, for if you lift them by education from their present condition, you do it under the penalty of forfeiting and losing your supremacy?' Will not slavery, with nearly all its evils, and with none of its compensation, come back at once? Not under its own detested name; it will call itself apprenticeship; it will put on the disguise of laws to prevent pauperism, by providing that every colored man who does not work in some prescribed way shall be arrested, and placed at the disposal of the authorities; or it will do its work by means of laws regulating wages and labor. However it be done, one thing is certain: if we take from the slaves all the protection and defence they found in slavery, and withhold from them all power of self-protection and self-defence, the race must perish, and we shall be their destroyers."”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Oration at Ravenna, Ohio (1865)

World, Education, School, Law

“The people who run the show in the NBA don't know anything about Islam. I think that may also be why some people are against me personally--because I am a Muslim. It's the same way people can be against you because of the color of your skin. They don't look past these things. But it always depends on the individual.”

Hakeem Olajuwon (1963) Nigerian–American basketball player

Slam dunk - interview with basketball player Hakeem Olajuwon - Interview, Feb, 1994 by Spike Lee.
Sourced Quotes

People, Way, Thinking, Past

“[I] could not design forms and colors that would achieve some preconceived result... I wasn't going to hire them. I was more interested in working WITH them than in their working for me.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

Quote from Rauschenberg, Andrew Forge, H.N. Abrams, New York n.d., p. 12
1980's

“Darwin's racism has nothing to do with the credibility of the theory of evolution…. However, after much research, I do concede that you won't find anything in Darwin's writings that would indicate that he in any way felt blacks were to be treated as inferior or that his views of them were due to their skin color.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

The Origin of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition (2009)

Way

“Colored men of Tennessee, humble and unworthy as I am, if no better shall be found I will indeed be your Moses and lead you through the Red Sea of war and bondage to a fairer future of liberty and peace. I speak now as one who feels the world his country and all who love equal rights his friends.”

Andrew Johnson (1808–1875) American politician, 17th president of the United States (in office from 1865 to 1869)

As quoted in "The Good Fight" https://archive.org/details/orationsandaddr03curtgoog (1865), by George William Curtis. Quote

Love, Men, War, World

“My dear Brother, - I am working like one actually possessed, more than ever I am in a dumb fury of work… Perhaps something will happen to me like what Eug. Delacroix spoke of, "I discovered painting when I had no longer teeth or breath." What I dream of in my best moments is not so much of striking color effects as once more the half tones.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Sept. 1889; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, p. 33 (letter 604) 1880s, 1889

Dreams, Painting

“I deny and utterly scout the idea, that there is now, properly speaking, any such thing as a negro problem before the American people. It is not the negro, educated or illiterate, intelligent or ignorant, who is on trial, or whose qualities are giving trouble to the nation… The real question, the all-commanding question, is whether American justice, American liberty, American civilization, American law, and American Christianity can be made to include and protect, alike and forever, all American citizens… It is whether this great nation shall conquer its prejudices, rise to the dignity of its professions, and proceed in the sublime course of truth and liberty marked out for itself during the late war, or shall swing back to its ancient moorings of slavery and barbarism. The trouble is that the colored people have still to contend against ’a fierce and formidable foe,’ the ghost of a by-gone, dead and buried institution.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/

War, People, Truth, Education

“Some men dream of wealth and power. I tell of days. Of woods taking me where they wanted to go, hawthorns scarlet with October, the lacy loveliness of hemlocks, old lanes gold with Autumn, fall colors like stained glass showing through the leaded lines of black branches, each tree a love, each leaf a now, the dry-bone look of maple twigs in winter, the silent snow. For more than seventy Indian summers I have begged each one not to go, even as I spoke, the leaves showered down around me.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

Grouse Along the Tramroad (1986)

Love, Men, Dreams, Autumn

“The only way to hasten the kingdom is to hasten growth; to hasten work, and that, too, along the very lines in which the "resounding loom of time" is weaving in its various-colored threads.”

John Bascom (1827–1911) American academic administrator

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 269.

Way, Time

“Likewise, police officers on patrol in our nation’s cities often work in environments where a hugely disproportionate percentage of street crime is committed by young men of color. Something happens to people of good will working in that environment. After years of police work, officers often can’t help but be influenced by the cynicism they feel.”

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

Men, People, Feeling, Help

“For the first time in the history of our people, and in the history of the whole American people, we join in this high worship, and march conspicuously in the line of this time-honored custom. First things are always interesting, and this is one of our first things. It is the first time that, in this form and manner, we have sought to do honor to an American great man, however deserving and illustrious. I commend the fact to notice; let it be told in every part of the republic; let men of all parties and opinions hear it; let those who despise us, not less than those who respect us, know that now and here, in the spirit of liberty, loyalty, and gratitude, let it be known everywhere, and by everybody who takes an interest in human progress and in the amelioration of the condition of mankind, that, in the presence and with the approval of the members of the American House of Representatives, reflecting the general sentiment of the country; that in the presence of that august body, the American Senate, representing the highest intelligence and the calmest judgment of the country; in the presence of the Supreme Court and Chief-Justice of the United States, to whose decisions we all patriotically bow; in the presence and under the steady eye of the honored and trusted President of the United States, with the members of his wise and patriotic Cabinet, we, the colored people, newly emancipated and rejoicing in our blood-bought freedom, near the close of the first century in the life of this republic, have now and here unveiled, set apart, and dedicated a monument of enduring granite and bronze, in every line, feature, and figure of which the men of this generation may read, and those of aftercoming generations may read, something of the exalted character and great works of Abraham Lincoln, the first martyr President of the United States.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

Life, Men, People, Justice

“Anything short of radical change to the Republican party’s war on voters of color is merely feigned outrage. Even if the white supremacists are condemned, even if the entire Republican party rises up in self-professed outrage at white supremacists, if voter suppression and other such racist policies survive, the white supremacists are winning. And America is losing.”

Russ Feingold (1953) Wisconsin politician; three-term U.S. Senator

Commenting in the aftermath of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in [Feingold, Russ, How the Republican party quietly does the bidding of white supremacists, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/19/republican-party-white-supremacists-charlottesville, 20 August 2018, The Guardian, August 19, 2017]
2017

War, Change

“I am not working for myself alone, I believe in the absolute necessity for a new art of color, of design, and - of the artistic life..”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Arles, Spring 1888; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 469) p. 22 1880s, 1888

Life, Art

“I didn't fight this fight for the blacks, the whites or the Spanish, I fought the fight for the people. We're all God's children. I don't see color. I'm not a racist When I look at Gerry Cooney, I just see a man trying to take my head off.”

Larry Holmes (1949) American boxer

As quoted in "Sport: Larry Holmes: I Still Have It" by Tom Callahan in TIME (21 June 1982).

God, Children, People, Fight

“The colored leaves
Have hidden the paths
On the autumn mountain.
How can I find my girl,
Wandering on ways I do not know?”

Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (662–710) Japanese poet

XXIII, p. 25
Kenneth Rexroth's translations, One Hundred Poems from the Japanese (1955)

Way, Girl, Mountain, Autumn

“Seeing several of these paintings [his series paintings 'Hommage to the square', Josef Albers painted in 1963-64] next to each other makes it obvious that each painting is an instrumentation on its own.
This means that they all are of different palettes, and, therefore, so to speak, of different climates.
Choice of the colors used, as well as their order, is aimed at an interaction – influencing and changing each other forth and back.
Thus, character and feeling alter from painting to painting without any additional 'handwriting' or, so-called, texture.
Though the underlying symmetrical and quasi-concentric order of squares remains the same in all paintings – in proportion and placement – these same squares group or single themselves, connect and separate in many different ways
In consequence, they move forth and back, in and out, and grow up and down and near and far, as well as enlarged and diminished. All this to proclaim color autonomy as a means of plastic organization.”

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

6 short quotes from: 'The Origin of Art'
Homage to the square' (1964)

Way, Feeling, Change, Painting

“I say that the true artist-seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own sacred human conscience.”

Jerome David Salinger book Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), Seymour: An Introduction (1959)

Death, Beauty, Fools

“There are those who are going to be disappointed when no life is found on other planets. Not I — I want to be reminded and delighted and surprised once again, through interplanetary exploration, with the infinite variety and novelty of phenomena that can be generated from such simple principles. The test of science is its ability to predict. Had you never visited the earth, could you predict the thunderstorms, the volcanoes, the ocean waves, the auroras, and the colorful sunset? A salutary lesson it will be when we learn of all that goes on on each of those dead planets — those eight or ten balls, each agglomerated from the same dust cloud and each obeying exactly the same laws of physics.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

volume II; lecture 41, "The Flow of Wet Water"; section 41-6, "Couette flow"; p. 41-12
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)

Life, Law, Disappointment, Learning

“As far as transience is concerned... You see the whole story in those shoes, that's why I paint them so accurate. The physical attitude; crooked legs, a lump. Those shoes were talking to me, and then I thought: I can see that you were so and so big, but did you also had a wife? Children? What were you doing? And what really mattered to me is my own place between them. Between those stories, that mystery. That pitch-black background [in Jopie's paintings, till c.1979-80] - I had found it. A cry for attention. Those pants, that shirt, that background, that was: here I am. But then it become mannerism. So I carried on realistically but avoiding the black background at all costs. It is as Rutger Kopland says: Whoever found it did not look well. Now I want to paint people like this, like they are made of colored mud. Color spiritualizes.”

Jopie Huisman (1922–2000) Dutch painter

translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van Jopie Huisman, in het Nederlands: Wat de vergankelijkheid betreft.. .Je ziet het hele verhaal in die schoenen, daarom schilder ik ze zo scherp. De lichamelijke houding; kromme poten, een knobbel. Die schoenen praatten tegen me, en dan dacht ik: ik kan zien dat je zo en zo groot was, maar had je ook een vrouw? Kinderen? Wat deed je? En waar het me in wezen dan om ging is mijn plekkie daartussen. Tussen die verhalen, dat mysterie. Die pikzwarte achtergrond [in zijn schilderijen, tot c. 1979-80]; ik had het gevonden. Een schreeuw om aandacht. Die broek, dat hemd, die achtergrond, dat was: hier ben ik. Maar dan word je een maniërist. Dus ik ben realistisch doorgegaan, maar koste wat het kost die zwarte achtergrond vermijdend. Het is zoals nl:Rutger Kopland zegt: Wie het gevonden heeft, heeft niet goed gezocht. Nu wil ik de mensen zo schilderen, als zijn ze van gekleurde modder. De kleur die vergeestelijkt.
Mens & Gevoelens: Jopie Huisman', 1993

Children, People, Shoe, Painting

“The painter thinks in terms of form and color. The goal is not to be concerned with the reconstitution of an anecdotal fact, but with constitution of a pictorial fact.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1908 - 1920, quotes from Artists on Art...(1972), p. 423 - Braque's quote, Paris 1917

Thinking

“Dear August... I want to start like a child, to express my impression in front of nature with three colors and a few lines, and then add to forms and colors, where it requires the expression, that the working process is only a dedication, and never a removal. Only we painters know how stupidly difficult this is.”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

1911 - 1914

Nature

“Last Saturday it was a rainy evening. I took advantage of that to draw once again the whole evening at Dam Square all over and Sunday I repainted my painting [of Dam square] completely, that yellow nasty color has disappeared now completely. The work has become much broader, and I believe it is really finished now. When my model came, the change struck her so strongly that she said, 'sir, the painting has become beautifully now'. I myself am very happy with it, because I believe it is really good.”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) Zaterdag avond was het een regenachtige avond. Ik heb daarvan geprofiteerd en [om] de heele avond op de Dam alles nog eens goed over te teekenen en Zondag mijn schilderij heelemaal overgeschilderd, de geele nare kleur is er heelemaal uit. Het is veel ruimer geworden, en ik geloof dat het er nu is. Toen mijn modelletje kwam, trof haar de verandering zoo erg dat het zei, hè meneer, nou is het schilderij mooi geworden. Ik zelf ben er erg mee in mijn schik, want het is geloof ik, heel goed. quote of Breitner in a letter to his friend Herman van der Weele, Amsterdam, 14 June 1893; original letter in RKD-Archive, The Hague https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/54 1890 - 1900

Happiness, Change, Drawing, Painting

“To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed through words, so to convey this so that others may experience the same feeling — this is the activity of art.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What is Art? (1897)

Art, Feeling

“The assumption that effective cartographic technique and its evaluation is based in part on some subjective artistic or aesthetic sense on the part of the cartographer and map reader is somewhat disconcerting. For example, E. Raisz claims that the “effective use of lines or colors requires artistic judgment,” and J. K. Wright explains that the suitability of a symbol “depends on the map maker's taste and sense of harmony.” Throughout the literature there are numerous similar assertions regarding the assumed subjective aesthetic and artistic content of cartography.”

Arthur H. Robinson (1915–2004) American geographer

Source: The Look of Maps (1952), p. 16; as cited in: Kirk Patrick Goldsberry (2007) Real-time Traffic Maps. p. 23

Literature, Sense, Parting, Dependency

“My paintings [c. 1907] were aglow with colors and so my soul was contended with them.”

Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941) Russian painter

1900 - 1935
Source: Expressionism: A Revolution in German Art, Dietmer Elger, Taschen, 2002, p. 166

Soul, Painting

“Now as ever, he was startled by the wild exuberance of the twentieth century. All these lights! Colored neon and glaring filaments, powered, he had learned, but mechanical dams spanning rivers hundreds of miles away. And most of this—astonishingly—in the name of advertising.”

Robert Charles Wilson book A Bridge of Years

Source: A Bridge of Years (1991), Chapter 9 (p. 148)

Light, Learning

“If you pass the light from a sodium flash through a prism, you get a pattern very different from the familiar continuous rainbow that Newton elicited from natural sunlight. Instead of a continuous pattern, in which all gradations of pure color are apparently represented, the sodium flash generates a series of lines of light. …in the musical analogy, sodium produces a chord where sunlight produced all possible tones—"white noise."”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Other elements produce other chords.
Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

Music, Nature, Light

“Government of the United States was made by men of all races and colors, not for white men, but for the refuge and defense of man. If it does not rest upon the natural rights of man, it rests nowhere. If it does not exist by the consent of governed then any exclusion is possible, and it is a shorter step from an exclusive white man's government to an exclusively rich white man's government, than it is from a system for mankind to one for white men. The spirit which excludes some men today because they are of a certain color, may exclude others tomorrow because they are of a certain poverty or a certain church or a certain birthplace. There is no safety, no guarantee, no security in a prejudice.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

If we build strong and long, we must build upon moral principle.
1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Men, Nature, Strong

“I am startled, occasionally, to find “intelligence” used as the antithesis of “feeling”, as though the two played against each other. Nothing could be further from the truth. No intelligent interpretation is lacking in emotional values. What this probably means is that, depending on gifts and degree of maturity, some natures emphasize brain over heart. Where such an imbalance occurs, it must be corrected by conscious and concentrated application to emotional content. If an interpretation is unduly cerebral, liveness and color can be infused into it by attention to whether the theme is now in the right hand, now in the left; whether it is supported by an accompaniment which has significance of its own, or merely hums along.”

Benno Moiseiwitsch (1890–1963) British musician

Playing in the Grand Style (1950)

Truth, Feeling, Intelligence, Support

“At the most elemental level, reality evanesces into something called Schröedinger's Wave Function: a mathematical abstraction which is best represented as a pattern in an infinite-dimensional space, Hilbert Space. Each point of the Hilbert Space represents a possible state of affairs. The wave function for some one physical or mental system takes the form of, let us say, a coloring in of Hilbert Space. The brightly colored parts represent likely states for the system, the dim parts represent less probable states of affairs.”

Rudy Rucker (1946) American mathematician, computer scientist, science fiction author and philosopher

Source: The Sex Sphere (1983), p. 133-134

Mathematics, Reality, Parting

“But I've noticed something with other artists who do use the whole range of forms of colours and black - in Albers, for instance, who experiments with yellow, red, blue, the whole scale. Of course I love his colour paintings, but when I see a black-and-white such as 'The Homage to a Black and White Square' [ Josef Albers painted more versions], I like that best, you know. I think it has something to do with deciding just exactly what you really like best. There is always that wonderful element of doubt. I like the black painters really, even if they did work in color.... Velasquez.... also Tintoretto, and Rembrandt... Goya..”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

Quote of Kline in an interview (March 1960) with David Sylvester, edited for broadcasting by the BBC first published in 'Living Arts', Spring 1963; as cited in Interviews with American Artists, David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, pp. 61-62
1960's

Love, Thinking, Painting

“It will be helpful in our mutual objective to allow every man in America to look his neighbor in the face and see a man — not a color.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Foreword to booklet on interracial relations prepared by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, as quoted in The New York Times (22 June 1964)

Help

“On the whole [the alignment of a series of stained glass windows with the interior of a villa in The Hague] I have thought about all the time... I want to focus more on the architecture of the interior in general and that should we do together [with architect Buys]... Now I was already thinking, the enormous color effect that the window will generate - and that will certainly become powerful - must be accompanied with strong colors - the hall -, otherwise the window itself will be too much isolated. For instance the staircase, could it be painted in strong colors and not [in] oak.... deep ultramarine blue or green, with a beautiful colorful carpet.... I feel I must make designs for carpets, to create in that way a beautiful unity with the stained glass as a whole.”

Jacoba van Heemskerck (1876–1923) Dutch painter

translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van Jacoba van Heemskerck, in het Nederlands: Over het geheel [de afstemming van een serie aan Jacoba opgedragen glasramen met het interieur van een villa in Den Haag] heb ik steeds loopen denken.. ..ik wil mij veel meer op de architectuur van het binnenhuis in het algemeen toeleggen en dat moeten wij samen doen [met architect Buys].. .Nu heb ik al gedacht het enorme kleur-effekt dat het raam zal maken en dat zal zeker machtig werken, moet gedragen worden door sterke kleuren - de hal - anders staat het teveel alleen; zou de trap b.v. in de verf een sterke kleur kunnen krijgen en niet [in] eikenhout.. ..diep ultramarijn blauw of groen en dan een prachtige kleurige loper.. ..ik voel dat ik ontwerpen voor tapijten moet maken om zoo met het glas in lood een mooi geheel te hebben.
Quote in een brief van Jacoba aan architect J. Buys, 28 April 1920 in archief N.D.B., Amsterdam; as cited by Herbert Henkels, in Jacoba van Heemskerck, kunstenares van het Expressionisme, Haags Gemeentemuseum The Hague, 1982, p. 42
1920's

Beauty, Way, Feeling, Thinking

“"4 example the other day i saw a black person walking down the street and i was like "omg a negro" but instead of walking on the other side i said "what would rumsfeld do?" so i stayed on the sidewalk. when he came up to me i wanted to show him that i have no problems with people of color so i said "hey" and offered him my spare change before he could even ask."”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

i love donald rumsfeld http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=af_racist The Best Page in the Universe, April Fools

People, Problem, Change, Personality

“It was the ultimate possible statement of powerlessness and desperation [Richter is referring to w:John Cage's famous 'Lecture on Nothing']. Nothing, absolutely nothing left, no figures, no color, nothing. Then you realize after you've painted three of them that one's better than the others and you ask yourself why is that. When I see eight pictures together I no longer feel that they're sad, or if so, they're sad in a pleasant way.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Source: after 2000, Doubt and belief in painting' (2003), p. 95, note 28

Sadness, Way, Feeling, Painting

“The old theology had few if any fast colors, and it has become very faded and worn under the fierce light and intense activity of our day. Let it go; it is outgrown and outworn. What mankind will finally clothe themselves with to protect them from the chill of the great void, or whether or not they will clothe themselves at all, but become toughened and indifferent, is more than I can pretend to say. For my part, the longer I live the less I feel the need of any sort of theological belief, and the more I am content to let unseen powers go on their way with me and mine without question or distrust. They brought me here, and I have found it well to be here; in due time they will take me hence, and I have no doubt that will be well for me too.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Preface
The Light of Day (1900)

Way, Feeling, Question, Light

“The men of the Niagara Movement coming from the toil of the year's hard work and pausing a moment from the earning of their daily bread turn toward the nation and again ask in the name of ten million the privilege of a hearing. In the last year the work of the Negro hater has flourished in the land. Step by step the defenders of the rights of American citizens have retreated. The work of stealing the black man's ballot has progressed and the fifty and more representatives of stolen votes still sit in the nation's capital. Discrimination in travel and public accommodation has so spread the some of our weaker brethren are actually afraid to thunder against color discrimination as such and are simply whispering for ordinary decencies.”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

The Niagara Movement, Address to the Country

Men, Travel

“Let me assure my countrymen of the Southern States that it is my earnest desire to regard and promote their truest interest — the interests of the white and of the colored people both and equally — and to put forth my best efforts in behalf of a civil policy which will forever wipe out in our political affairs the color line and the distinction between North and South, to the end that we may have not merely a united North or a united South, but a united country.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Inaugural Address (5 March 1877)

People, Effort, Country

“The subject matter of creation is chaos. The present feeling seems to be that the artist is concerned with form, color, and spatial arrangement. This objective approach to art reduces it to a kind of ornament. The whole attitude of abstract painting, for example, has been such that it has reduced painting to an ornamental art whereby the picture surface is broken up in geometrical fashion into a new kind of design-image. It is a decorative art built on a slogan of purism where the attempt is made for an unworldly statement…”

Barnett Newman (1905–1970) American artist

Source: 1940 - 1950, The Plasmic Image 1. 1943-1945, p. 139

Art, Feeling, Fashion, Painting

“I want color and form to have contradictorily functions.”

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

Quote from: 'Albers Paints a Picture' Elaine de Kooning, Art News 49, November 1950, p. 57; as quoted in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983, p. 67

Quotes about colors page 13

Quotes about colors
page 13