Quotes about drawing (1692 quotes, page 14)

“Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

As quoted by in the review of 'The Drawings of Henri Matisse', exhibit at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art, by Theodore F Wolff in The Christian Science Monitor (25 March 1985)
Posthumous quotes

“As an actor, you're sort of the court-appointed lawyer for the character. And that's what used to draw me to scripts – something in a woman that I wanted to defend, something that I recognized or wanted to understand, something that turned my head.”

Vera Farmiga (1973) American actress

As quoted in " Vera Farmiga interview: Chats 'Up in the Air' and her craft http://www.nj.com/entertainment/movies/index.ssf/2009/12/vera_farmiga_interview_chats_up_in_the_air_and_her_craft.html" by Stephen Whitty at NewJersey.com (December 7, 2009)

Understanding

“Not unlike the bear which bringeth forth
In the end of thirty dayes a shapeless birth;
But after licking, it in shape she drawes,
And by degrees she fashions out the pawes,
The head, and neck, and finally doth bring
To a perfect beast that first deformed thing.”

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544–1590) French writer

First Week, First Day. Compare: "I had not time to lick it into form, as a bear doth her young ones", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader.
La Semaine; ou, Création du monde (1578)

Fashion , Birth , Perfection

“To proceed from assumptions about an abstract theoretical set-up and from them to draw conclusions about the observable world and to test - by rough or more refined means - whether the conformity with observations is "good" enough, is indeed the time honoured procedure that all empirical sciences, including the natural sciences, have used. I shall therefore not plead guilty of heresy even if I do work with choice-theory concepts that are not invariant under a general monotonic transformation of the utility indicator.”

Ragnar Frisch (1895–1973) Norwegian economist

Ragnar Frisch. " A complete scheme for computing all direct and cross demand elasticities in a model with many sectors http://econ.ucdenver.edu/beckman/Research/readings/frisch-demand-econometrica.pdf." Econometrica 27.2 (1959), p. 178; Cited in: Chipman, John S. " http://www.sv.uio.no/econ/om/tall-og-fakta/nobelprisvinnere/ragnar-frisch/Chipman%20paper[1.pdf The contributions of Ragnar Frisch to economics and econometrics]." ECONOMETRIC SOCIETY MONOGRAPHS 31 (1998): 58-110.
1940-60s

World , Nature , Science , Time

“I would like to hear more of the consummate melodic master, but I feel that big business and his record company have had a corrupting influence on his material. The rock and pop thing certainly draws a wider audience. It happens more and more these days, that unqualified people with executive positions try to tell musicians what is good and what is bad music. It’s tempting for the musician to prejudice his own views when recording opportunities are so infrequent but I for one am determined to resist the temptation.”

Miles Davis (1926–1991) American jazz musician

Bill Evans, on about Miles Davis's change of style to jazz fusion.
http://jazztimes.com/articles/20128-miles-davis-and-bill-evans-miles-and-bill-in-black-white.
Quotes by others

People , Music , Feeling , Business

“Summer fog. It leached all color and substance from the world, leaving only grays. Lead gray tombstone gray cobweb gray ash gray snot gray dust gray corpse gray. It was unheard-of that there be fog at this time of the year, late August. So it had to be another portent — as dire a one as the death of the One-Handed Warrior. There were many who said that the fog had its origin in the supercooled ashes of the hero: each molecule of his scattered body accreting water vapor, each tiny relic drawing to itself the air's own tears to fashion this wide-spreading shroud over the Many-Colored Land.”

Julian May (1931–2017) American science fiction, fantasy, horror, science and children's writer

The Adversary (Houghton Mifflin, 1984), ISBN 0-395-34410-7, p. 19 (opening lines of chapter 1)

Death , World , Color , Fashion

“There is but one question ultimately to be asked respecting every line you draw, Is it right or wrong? If right, it most assuredly is not a "free" line, but an intensely continent, restrained and considered line; and the action of the hand in laying it is just as decisive, and just as "free" as the hand of a first-rate surgeon in a critical incision.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Cestus of Aglaia, chapter VI, section 72 (1865-66).

Question , Decision

“The great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter and that of the stars; it is that from our very prison we should draw, from our own selves, images powerful enough to deny our own nothingness.”

André Malraux (1901–1976) French novelist, art theorist and politician

La condition humaine [Man's Fate] (1933)

Star

“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.”

L. P. Jacks (1860–1955) British educator, philosopher, and Unitarian minister

Misattributed to Chateaubriand on the internet and even some recently published books, this statement actually originated with L. P. Jacks in Education through Recreation (1932)
Misattributed

Education , Art , Appearance

“I was a weird little kid. I was very irritable, bored, frustrated. I felt my imagination bubbling inside my head without having any way to express itself. Given a crayon and paper, I would not draw a train or a house. I would draw these monsters, beasts and demons.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

Gigaplex's interview, 1995

Way , Imagination , Housing , Training

“When the soul has been deeply touched, it is by love alone that it desires to be intimately joined to God. This is why we advocate reducing ardent aspiration to a few words, even to the mere word ‘love’. This love sends forth ardent and fiery flames with all its strength. As a result. A blazing divine fire is enkindled in the soul. It is in this way that God stirs up the soul and draws it strongly inward. p. 86”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From Prayer, Aspiration, and Contemplation

Love , God , Way , Soul

““You know, old books are a big problem for us. Old knowledge in general. We call it OK. Old knowledge, OK. Did you know that ninety-five percent of the internet was only created in the last five years? But we know that when it comes to all human knowledge, the ratio is just the opposite—in fact, OK accounts for most things that most people know, and have ever known.”…
“So where is it, right? Where’s the OK? Well, it’s in old books, for one thing…—and it’s also in people’s heads, a lot of traditional knowledge, that’s what we call TK. OK and TK.” He’s drawing little overlapping blobs, labeling them with acronyms. “Imagine if we could make all that OK/TK available all the time, to everyone. On the web, on your phone. No question would go unanswered ever again.””

Robin Sloan (1979) American writer

Source: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (2012), Chapter 11 “The Spider” (p. 86; ellipses represent minor elisions of description)

People , Books , Imagination , Question

“If you want to be served you must draw the distinction between those who want to serve you and those who don't, and if the electors of South Lancashire and of the country generally are contented to allow this method of expenditure to go on, this Continental system of feeding the desires of classes and portions of the community at the expense of the whole—it is idle for you to satisfy yourselves with vague and general promises. … If that is to be the system on which public finance is to be administered you must be prepared to resign all hopes of remission of taxation, even in good years, and in bad years you must look for a steady augmentation of the income-tax.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Leigh, Lancashire (20 October 1868), quoted in The Times (21 October 1868), p. 11.
1860s

Hope , Communication , Country

“Ah, life, young and fragile life, sent forth from the dependable darkness, from the snug warmth of the maternal womb into a vast, unfamiliar and illuminated world! How it flinches and draws back, filled with aversion and discouragement! How it hesitates to accept the venture proposed to it!”

Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) Polish novelist and painter

“Nimrod” http://www.schulzian.net/translation/shops/nimrod.htm
His father, Living things

Life , World , Maternity , Dependency

“… And this is the origin of pop music: it's a professional music which draws upon both folk music and fine arts music as well.”

Pete Seeger (1919–2014) American folk singer

Pop Chronicles, Show 1 - Play A Simple Melody: Pete Seeger on the origins of pop music http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19745/m1/, interview recorded 2.14.1968 http://web.archive.org/web/20110615153027/http://www.library.unt.edu/music/special-collections/john-gilliland/o-s.

Art , Music

“At an unknown hour, from a source that is still sealed to us, but inexorable, the Work comes into the world. Cold calculations, splashes leaping up without plan, mathematically accurate construction (laid bare or concealed) silent, screaming drawing, scrupulous finish, colour in fanfares or played pianissimo on the strings, large, serene, cradling, fragmented planes. Isn’t that a Form? Aren't those the means?
Suffering, seeking, tormented souls with a deep fissure, caused by the collision of the spiritual with the material... Shame on him who turns his soul's ear away from the mouth of art. A human being speaks to human beings about the superhuman – the language of art.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote of Kandinsky, from the catalog of the second exhibition of the 'Neue Künstlervereinigung', München, August, 1910; as cited by de:Wolf-Dieter Dube, in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 95
1910 - 1915

World , Art , Soul , Mathematics

“Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, American University speech

War , People , Peace , Hope

“There was one artist who wrote as beautifully as he painted. That was Hokusai - He speaks for all artists, whether they are painters or not. [He wrote]: "I have been in love with painting ever since I became conscious of it at the age of six. I drew some pictures I thought fairly good when I was fifty, but really nothing I did before the age of seventy was of any value at all. At seventy three I have at last caught every aspect of nature-birds, fish, animals, insects, trees, grasses, all. When I am eighty I shall have developed still further. And I will really master the secrets of art at ninety. When I reach a hundred my work will be truly sublime, and my final goal will be attained around the age of one hundred and ten, when every line and dot I draw will be imbued with life."”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Reflections (1981)

Love , Life , Secret , Age

“This shared concern with continuity accounts for a good part of the affinity I feel with Schoenberg, an affinity I have openly claimed in drawing from him both the title and the subtitle of the present volume. To me, as to Schoenberg, such continuity constitutes important evidence that the essentially aesthetic act of constructing a 'text,' whether on paper or in one's professional life, has been subjected to rational restraints, in all the Kantian senses of 'rationality.' From this viewpoint, continuity is valued as a sign that a text has been carefully constructed to meet rigorous standards not only of formal coherence but also of logical precision and, espeically crucial, of moral scrupulousness.”

Rose Rosengard Subotnik (1942) American musicologist

Subotnik, Rose Rosengard (1991). Developing Variations: Style and Ideology in Western Music, p.xx. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. .

Life , Feeling , Sense , Parting

“Verily as there is a property in God of ruth and pity, so verily there is a property in God of thirst and longing. (And of the virtue of this longing in Christ, we have to long again to Him: without which no soul cometh to Heaven.) And this property of longing and thirst cometh of the endless Goodness of God, even as the property of pity cometh of His endless Goodness. And though longing and pity are two sundry properties, as to my sight, in this standeth the point of the Spiritual Thirst: which is desire in Him as long as we be in need, drawing us up to His bliss. And all this was seen in the Shewing of Compassion: for that shall cease on Doomsday.
Thus He hath ruth and compassion on us, and He hath longing to have us; but His wisdom and His love suffereth not the end to come till the best time.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 31

Love , Wisdom , God , Soul

“Take an orange and draw something on it -- say, a human face. Now carefully remove the peel, trying to keep it in one piece, and flatten it against your kitchen table. You'll see that in making a two-dimensional object out of a round one, something has to give. Either the face gets distorted and looks all 'mushed out,' or in flattening the peel, it breaks into segments, dividing the face as well into several parts. A cartographer chooses between a series of those kind of lesser-of-two-evils alternatives.”

Arthur H. Robinson (1915–2004) American geographer

Robinson (1989) in Chicago Tribune; As cited in: Myrna Oliver (2004) "Arthur H. Robinson, 89; Cartographer Hailed for Map's Elliptical Design: Obituaries" in: Los Angeles Times. November 17, 2004

Evil , Parting

“The writer doesn’t push story into us, he withholds information in order that we draw his story out of ourselves.”

David Baboulene (1960) UK author

The Story Book (2010)

“It is very good to copy what one sees; it is much better to draw what you can't see any more but is in your memory. It is a transformation in which imagination and memory work together. You only reproduce what struck you, that is to say the necessary.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

C'est très bien de copier ce qu'on voit, c'est beaucoup mieux de dessiner ce que l'on ne voit plus que dans son mémoire. C'est une transformation pendant laquelle l'ingéniosité collabore avec la mémoire. Vous ne reproduisez que ce qui vous a frappé, c'est-à-dire le nécessaire.
Quoted in Maurice Sérullaz, L'univers de Degas (H. Scrépel, 1979), p. 13
quotes, undated

Imagination , Memory

“My theory has been to discover the modern synthesis by methods based upon science, methods based upon the theory of colors discovered by M. Chevreul, in conformity with the experiments of Maxwell and the measurements of N. 0. Rood; to substitute the optical mingling for the mingling of pigments; in other words, the decomposition of all the colors into their constituent elements; because the optical mingling excites much more intense luminosity than the mingling of pigments. As for the execution, we regard it as nothing; it is at any rate only unimportant, art having nothing to do with it. According to us, the sole originality consists in the character of the drawing and the vision individual to each artist.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote in a letter, circa 1886-87; as quoted in Brush and Pencil, Vol. XIII, no. 6 , article: 'Camille Pissarro' Impressionist', by Henry G. Stephens; March, 1904, pp. 414-15
1880's

Art , Color , Science

“[T]ake the Bible just as it reads; and if it be translated incorrectly, and there is a scholar on the earth who professes to be a Christian, and he can translate it any better than King James's translators did it, he is under obligation to do so, or the curse is upon him. If I understood Greek and Hebrew as some may profess to do, and I knew the Bible was not correctly translated, I should feel myself bound by the law of justice to the inhabitants of the earth to translate that which is incorrect and give it just as it was spoken anciently. Is that proper? Yes, I would be under obligation to do it. But I think it is translated just as correctly as the scholars could get it, although it is not correct in a great many instances. But it is no matter about that. Read it and observe it and it will not hurt any person in the world. If we are not to believe the whole of the Bible, let the man, whoever he may be, among the professed Christians, who thinks he knows, draw the line between the true and the false, so that the whole sectarian world may be able to take the right and leave the wrong. But the man Christ Jesus, who has revealed himself in the latter days, says the Bible is true and the people must believe it. Let us believe it, and then obey it.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses 14:226-227 (August 27, 1871)
1870s

People , World , Justice , Law

“The old Liberal party is drawing to its end. These last two elections, particularly the last, are the Mene Mene Tekel Upharsen of the Liberal banquet. The socialist does not indeed get a majority but while the two old parties are cutting each other's throats, he slips in and will continue to slip in and the encouragement to his party is great. The Liberal party will lose their industrial seats, while the Conservative party, the natural refuge in time of trouble, creams off all who will accept protection.”

Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847–1929) British politician

Letter to Sir George Murray (27 July 1907), quoted in McKinstry, pp. 499-500.

Nature , Time

“Those incentives have made the legacy of this Courts public purpose test an unhappy one. In the 1950s, no doubt emboldened in part by the expansive understanding of public use this Court adopted in Berman, cities rushed to draw plans for downtown development. Of all the families displaced by urban renewal from 1949 through 1963, 63 percent of those whose race was known were nonwhite, and of these families, 56 percent of nonwhites and 38 percent of whites had incomes low enough to qualify for public housing, which, however, was seldom available to them. Public works projects in the 1950s and 1960s destroyed predominantly minority communities in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Baltimore, Maryland. In 1981, urban planners in Detroit, Michigan, uprooted the largely lower-income and elderly Poletown neighborhood for the benefit of the General Motors Corporation. Urban renewal projects have long been associated with the displacement of blacks; [i]n cities across the country, urban renewal came to be known as Negro removal. Over 97 percent of the individuals forcibly removed from their homes by the slum-clearance project upheld by this Court in Berman were black. Regrettably, the predictable consequence of the Court’s decision will be to exacerbate these effects.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Dissenting Kelo v. New London http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&navby=case&vol=000&invol=04-108.
2000s, Kelo v. New London (2005)

Family , Home , Communication , Understanding

“It's unnecessary to introduce magic into the explanation of physical and biological phenomena when in fact there is every likelihood that the continuation of research as it is now practiced will indeed fill all the gaps that Sheldrake draws attention to.”

John Maddox (1925–2009) Welsh chemist, physicist, journalist and editor

About Rupert Sheldrake's book A New Science of Life, in a BBC interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRjQmZLT8bI, 1994.

“To be thus—
Grey-hair'd with anguish, like these blasted pines,
Wrecks of a single winter, barkless, branchless,
A blighted trunk upon a cursed root,
Which but supplies a feeling to decay—
And to be thus, eternally but thus,
Having been otherwise! Now furrow'd o'er
With wrinkles, plough'd by moments, not by years
And hours—all tortured into ages—hours
Which I outlive!—Ye toppling crags of ice!
Ye avalanches, whom a breath draws down
In mountainous o'erwhelming, come and crush me!
I hear ye momently above, beneath,
Crash with a frequent conflict; but ye pass,
And only fall on things that still would live.”

George Gordon Byron book Manfred

Act I, scene ii.
Manfred (1817)

Age , Feeling , Mountain , Winter

“But let us not speak anymore of books and theories on paper. Now then, did you see my exhibition? As you may remember, 1 gathered in 'Cahiers d'Art' ten very recent paintings, twenty-five gouaches and watercolors, also recent, and twenty-eight drawings that span the period from 1910-1934. In the majority of the compositions on canvas I used a sand technique more or less consistently.... but I usually don't distinguish between traditional oil painting, gouache, tempera and watercolor, and I even simultaneously use the various techniques in the same work. What is essential for me is to be able to clearly convey what I want, to recount my dream. / consider both technique and form to be mere instruments of expression, and my stories, furthermore, are not narrative or historical in character, but purely pictorial.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

From an interview, 28 July 1935, in the Italian daily newspaper 'Lavoro fascista'; as quoted in Kandinsky in Paris: 1934-1944 - exhibition catalog, published by The Solomon K. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1985, p. 30
1930 - 1944

Books , Dreams , Painting

“Geomancy was a natural art, drawing on the inborn powers of the human soul to glean information from the larger soul of the world.”

Robert Fludd (1574–1637) British mathematician and astrologer

Robert Fludd, in The Art and Practice of Geomancy: Divination, Magic, and Earth Wisdom of the , p. 24.

World , Art , Soul , Nature

“Absyrtus in hot haste with his father's swift-assembled fleet draws nigh, and shakes a threatening torch at the escaping Greeks.”
Absyrtus subita praeceps cum classe parentis advehitur profugis infestam lampada Grais concutiens.

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book VIII, Lines 261–263

“The troubles of the 20th century are not unlike those of adolescence -- rapid growth beyond the ability of organizations to manage, uncontrollable emotion, and a desperate search for identity. Out of adolescence, however, comes maturity in which physical growth with all its attendant difficulties comes to an end, but in which growth continues in knowledge, in spirit, in community, and in love; it is to this that we look forward as a human race. This goal, once seen with our eyes, will draw our faltering feet toward it.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Kenneth Boulding, 1973, p. 21 as cited in: Donald W. Cole (1983) Conflict resolution technology. p. 5
1970s

Love , Search , Communication , Knowledge

“Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Life, ix
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part I - Lord, What is Man?

Life , Art

“There's no such thing in Nature; and you'll draw
A faultless monster which the world ne’er saw.”

John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby (1648–1721) English poet and notable Tory politician of the late Stuart period

Essay on Poetry (published 1723).
Compare:
"'High characters,' cries one, and he would see/ Things that ne’er were, nor are, nor e’er will be", John Suckling, The Goblins, Epilogue.
"Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see,/ Thinks what ne’er was, nor is, nor e’er shall be", Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1711), Part II, line 53.

World , Nature

“The sun was almost down on the mountain tops, and the shadows of the whole group fell upon the snow. I saw the Count lying within the box upon the earth, some of which the rude falling from the cart had scattered over him. He was deathly pale, just like a waxen image, and the red eyes glared with the horrible vindictive look which I knew so well. As I looked, the eyes saw the sinking sun, and the look of hate in them turned to triumph. But, on the instant, came the sweep and flash of Jonathan's great knife. I shrieked as I saw it shear through the throat. Whilst at the same moment Mr. Morris's bowie knife plunged into the heart. It was like a miracle, but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight. I shall be glad as long as I live that even in that moment of final dissolution, there was in the face a look of peace, such as I never could have imagined might have rested there.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Mina Harker
Dracula (1897)

Hate , Peace , Imagination , Mountain

“When you do what the poor weary dove did — when you just betake yourself to the one only ark for safety, the infinite Love will put forth His hand, and draw you in! Into union with Christ! Into renewing grace and supporting strength! Into peace! Oh! wondrous peace; oh! sweet, satisfying peace; oh! peace of God that passeth understanding!”

Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 151.

Love , God , Peace , Understanding

“For our party and for our party tactics there is but one valid basis: the basis of the class struggle, out of which the Social Democratic party has sprung up, and out of which alone it can draw the necessary strength to bid defiance to every storm and to all its enemies.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

“There is no doubt of the need for an up-to-date, balanced, and comprehensive work on the history of atomism, drawing ideas, mathematics, and experiment together into a single story. When available, it should become required reading for all students of the exact sciences.”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

p, 125
Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961)

History , Mathematics , Idea , Science

“We'll be deliberate, yet time is not on our side. I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

World , Time , Waiting

“I wanted to learn about Christ – about the Old Testament, which had been his Bible, and the New Testament, which was the Bible about him; about the history of the church, which had been founded on the faith that through him God had not only revealed his innermost nature and his purpose for the world, but had released into the world a fierce power to draw people into that nature and adapt them to that purpose… No intellectual pursuit had ever aroused in me such intense curiosity, and much more than my intellect was involved, much more than my curiosity aroused. In the unfamiliar setting of a Presbyterian church, of all places, I had been moved to astonished tears which came from so deep inside me that to this day I have never fathomed them, I wanted to learn more about the source of those tears and the object of that astonishment.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation (1983)

God , People , World , Faith

“The activity of observing establishes a distinction in a space that remains unmarked, the space from which the observer executes the distinction. The observer must employ a distinction in order to generate the difference between unmarked and marked space, and between himself and what he indicates. The whole point of this distinction (its intention) is to mark something as distinct from something else. At the same time, the observer — in drawing a distinction - makes himself visable to others. He betrays his presence - even if a further distinction is required to distinguish him.”

Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998) German sociologist, administration expert, and social systems theorist

Source: Art As a Social System (2000), p. 54 as cited in: Pamela M. Lee (2004) Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the 1960's. p. 66.

Time

“If they want to be illustrators, there's no substitute for a very intensive training in art, and also the use of computers. There are adjunct jobs that are available in publishing that get your foot in the door, and there isn't a designer that doesn't have to use the computer these days. But they have to learn how to draw as well. I'm old-fashioned. I think there's no substitute for basic skills.”

Tomie dePaola (1934) American children's illustrator and writer

An Interview with Tomie dePaola http://katybeebe.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/car-2000-05-12-b-013.pdf (May 2000)

Art , Fashion , Thinking , Learning

“They draw back into themselves, and are thrown back on their own bodies for gratification. The men become narcissistic and uncertain of the power of any woman, no matter how strange and beautiful, to arouse their desire, but the women remain continually receptive to male advances.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1940s, Balinese Character (1942), p. 26

Women , Men , Beauty

“We separate color and drawing because we have to. But nature doesn't. She doesn't give something a shape, for coloring it only afterwards. Form and color are inherent properties of the object that we have got as thing to paint. If we neglect one of both, we only give half.”

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

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
(original Dutch: citaat van Willem Roelofs, in het Nederlands:) Wij scheiden kleur en teekening af, omdat wij dat wel moeten. Maar de natuur doet dat niet. Zij geeft niet iets een vorm, om het daarna te kleuren. Vorm en kleur zijn inhaerente eigenschappen van het voorwerp, dat ons te schilderen is gegeven. Verwaarloozen wij een van beide, dan geven wij slechts de helft.
Quote of Roelofs, in Elsevier's geïllustreerd maandschrift..., Oct. / Nov. 1891; as cited in an excerpt in the RKD Archive https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/219, The Hague
undated quotes

Color , Nature , Painting

“There are a lot of things we can learn from the Soviet Union. Naturally, we should learn from its advanced and not its backward experience. The slogan we have advocated all along is to draw on the advanced Soviet experience. Who told you to pick up its backward experience? Some people are so undiscriminating that they say a Russian fart is fragrant. That too is subjectivism. The Russians themselves say it stinks. Therefore, we should be analytical.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Strengthen Party Unity and Carry Forward Party Traditions http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_53.htm (30 August 1956)

People , Nature , Learning

“Like drawing a straight line – you draw a straight line and it's crooked and you draw another straight line on top of it and it's crooked a different way and then you draw another one and eventually you have a very rich thing on your hands which is not a straight line. If you can do that the it seems to me you are doing more than most people. The thing is, it is very difficult to know oneself whether one is doing that or not, whether you mean what you do; and there is the other problem of the way you do it and whether sometimes you do more than you mean or you do less than you mean. It's very good if you can establish a language where it's clear that that is what you are doing – that you do what you mean to do.”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

interview at John's studio, Billy Klüver, March 1963, as quoted in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 85
1960s

People , Way , Problem

“I was in a slightly befuddled state by this time and the potent combination of watery beer and whiskey was bringing on a severe attack of drawing, as always happens when I start seeing unusual faces through a haze of controlled drinking. My body becomes a protective casing and lets me observe through the two keyholes on the front of my head.”

Ralph Steadman book The Joke's Over

The Kentucky Derby, p. 14
The Joke's Over (2006)

Drink , Beer , Time

“True majorities, in a TV-dominated and anti-intellectual age, may need sound bites and flashing lights—and I am not against supplying such lures if they draw children into even a transient concern with science. But every classroom has one [Oliver] Sacks, one [Eric] Korn, or one [Jonathan] Miller, usually a lonely child with a passionate curiosity about nature, and a zeal that overcomes pressures for conformity. Do not the one in fifty deserve their institutions as well—magic places, like cabinet museums, that can spark the rare flames of genius?”

Stephen Jay Gould book Dinosaur in a Haystack

"Cabinet Museums: Alive, Alive, O!", p. 246
Dinosaur in a Haystack (1995)

Children , Age , Nature , Light

“If by politeness then is meant goodness, it is appreciated by me as I trust it always has been, but if it is to mean the string of ceremonies generally used for concealing ill nature, and which have been found necessary to the existence of every society whose members are wanting in self respect and morality, I detest it more than ever.My prominent idea of a polite man is one who is nothing but polish. It is an unenviable reputation. If there was anything else in him the polish would never be noticed. He is a bad drawing finely worked up, and Gérôme says that every attempt at finish on a bad design serves only to make the work more contemptible.”

Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) American painter

Letter to Emily Sartain (ca. 1867); from Sylvan Schendler, Eakins (1967), footnote, ch. 10.

Idea , Nature

“The desire that drives an artist to graphic work is perhaps partly the effort to capture the unique and indefinite nature of a drawing in a fixed and durable form. Another aspect of it is that the technical manipulations exercise energies in the artist that he does not use in the far less strenuous crafts of drawing and painting... the mysterious attraction that surrounded the invention of printing in the Middle Ages is still felt by anyone who takes up graphics seriously and performs every stage in the process wit hits own hands.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

as quoted in Expressionism, de:Wolf-Dieter Dube; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 27
undated

Age , Exercises , Nature , Effort

“What is the good of drawing conclusions from experience? I don't deny we sometimes draw the right conclusions, but don't we just as often draw the wrong ones?”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

F 123
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook F (1776-1779)

“"Let's dicker, Lord Lyons," Lincoln said; the British minister needed a moment to understand he meant bargain. Lincoln gave him that moment, reaching into a desk drawer and drawing out a folded sheet of paper that he set on top of the desk. "I have here, sir, a proclamation declaring all Negroes held in bondage in those areas now in rebellion against the lawful government of the United States to be freed as of next January first. I had been saving this proclamation against a Union victory, but circumstances being as they are-" Lord Lyons spread his hands with genuine regret. "Had you won such a victory, Mr. President, I should not be visiting you today with the melancholy message I bear from my government. You know, sir, that I personally despise the institution of chattel slavery and everything associated with it." He waited for Lincoln to nod before continuing. "That said, however, I must tell you that an emancipation proclamation issued after the series of defeats Federal forces have suffered would be perceived as a cri de coeur, a call for servile insurrection to aid your flagging cause, and as such would not be favorably received in either London or Paris, to say nothing of its probable effect in Richmond. I am sorry, Mr. President, but this is not the way out of your dilemma." Lincoln unfolded the paper on which he'd written the decree abolishing slavery in the seceding states, put on a pair of spectacles to read it, sighed, folded it again, and returned it to its drawer without offering to show it to Lord Lyons. "If that doesn't help us, sir, I don't know what will," he said. His long, narrow face twisted, as if he were in physical pain. "Of course, what you're telling me is that nothing helps us, nothing at all."”

Harry Turtledove book The Great War: American Front

Source: The Great War: American Front (1998), p. 7

Pain , Law , Way , Understanding

“Whenever I stand up for the German peasant, it is for the sake of the Volk. I have neither ancestral estate nor manor… I believe I am the only statesman in the world who does not have a bank account. I hold no stock, I have no shares in any companies. I do not draw any dividends.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Speech to the Krupp Locomotive factory workers in Essen (27 March 1936), quoted in Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History (Hill and Wang), 2001, p. 246
1930s

World

“That is a Medieval way of drawing history, in which they do not respect the law and want the rest of the world to respect the law. That's not possible.”

Emir Kusturica (1954) Serbian film director, actor and musician of Bosnian origin

When asked his opinion on U.S. unilateralism. Znet interview (8 July 2002) http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=2086
2000s

World , Law , Way , History

“My artwork is about resistance, de-colonization, self-definition, self-empowerment and survival. I draw upon myths, family folklore, and indigenismo (a native way of being). I reinterpret and register all these as cultural, visual, iconographic manifestations of my identity. As the subject matter of my art, I exalt a lineage of women, energized from a sacred space of creation.”

Santa Barraza (1951)

Santa Barraza, Artist of the Borderlands (2001)

Women , Family , Art , Way

“SPAN ID=What_we_call_things> What we call things and where we draw the line between one class of things and another depend upon the interests we have and the purposes of the classification. For example, animals are classified in one way by the meat industry, in a different way by the leather industry, in another different way by the fur industry, and in a still different way by the biologist. None of these classifications is any more final than any of the others; each of them is useful for its purpose. </SPAN”

S. I. Hayakawa book Language in Thought and Action

Source: Language in Thought and Action (1949), Giving Things Names, p. 209-210

Way , Animals , Dependency

“People can be lovers and enemies at the same time, you know. We were… A man and woman draw apart from that long embrace, and see what they have done to each other… In age we lose everything; even the power to love.”

Willa Cather book My Mortal Enemy

Part II, Ch. 4
My Mortal Enemy (1926)

Love , People , Age , Lovers

“The English mind was like the London drawing room, a comfortable and easy spot, filled with bits and fragments of incoherent furnitures, which were never meant to go together, and could be arranged in any relation without making a whole, except by the square room. Philosophy might dispute about innate ideas till the stars died out in the sky, but about innate tastes no one, except perhaps a collie-dog, has the right to doubt; least of all the Englishman, for his tastes are his being; he drifts after them as unconsciously as a honey-bee drifts after his flowers.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Dogs , Star , Flowers , Idea

“Previous research addressing market orientation from a cultural perspective typically has used behavioral measures of this construct. Drawing on literature in the fields of organizational theory and marketing, the authors develop a multilayer model of market-oriented organizational culture. They draw an explicit distinction among values that support market orientation, norms for market orientation, artifacts indicating high and low market orientation, and market-oriented behaviors. On the basis Of qualitative research and a subsequent survey, the authors develop scales for measuring the different layers of market-oriented culture and analyze relationships among the different components of market-oriented culture. Findings indicate that artifacts play a crucial role in determining behavior within organizations. Results also indicate that a market-oriented culture influences financial performance indirectly through market performance and that this relationship is stronger in highly dynamic markets.”

Christian Homburg (1962) German academic

Source: "A multiple-layer model of market-oriented organizational culture", 2000, p. 449 ; Abstract

Behavior , Literature , Support

“The population of the earth today doubles regularly. If you were to draw up the population growth on a chart you would see that it goes back to zero about five thousand years ago. If man has been here millions of years like evolutionists teach, where is the population?”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Dissertation for doctor of philosophy in christian education (May 25, 1991)

“Dear Sir Verloren. Today I send you a drawing for your art-reviews. I would liked to have done more for you, but I have many demands for drawings from all sides and I am still very busy with paintings after my studies I made during the last trip. I hope that the drawing will be acceptable. The price is 150 guilders. I am not sure you need a title, call it just simply, 'Bij een Drentsch dorp' (At a village in Drenthe).”

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

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
(original Dutch: citaat van Willem Roelofs, in het Nederlands:) Waarde Heer Verloren. Heden zend ik U eene teekening voor Uwe kunstbeschouwingen. Gaarne had ik méér gedaan, maar heb aan alle kanten vraag naar teekeningen en zit daarenboven nog tot over de ooren in schilderijen naar studies der laatste reis. Ik hoop dat men de teekening redelijk goed zal vinden.- De prijs is 150 guldens.- Ik weet niet of gij een titel behoeft, noem het dan maar eenvoudig, 'Bij een Drenthsch dorp'.
Quote from a letter of W. Roelofs 2 Oct. 1861, to art-collector/dealer P. verloren van Themaat in Utrecht, taken from: an extract in the Dutch Archive R.K.D., The Hague https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/281
1860's

Hope , Art , Business , Study

“Plato in his allegory of the soul—in the Phaedrus—though he apparently divides the passions which draw the human chariot into two classes, the heavenward and the earthward—figured by the white horse and the black horse respectively—does not recommend that the black horse should be destroyed or dismissed, but only that he (as well as the white horse) should be kept under due control by the charioteer. By which he seems to intend that there is a power in man which stands above and behind the passions, and under whose control alone the human being can safely move. In fact if the fiercer and so-called more earthly passions were removed, half the driving force would be gone from the chariot of the human soul. Hatred may be devilish at times—but after all the true value of it depends on what you hate, on the use to which the passion is put. Anger, though inhuman at one time is magnificent and divine at another. Obstinacy may be out of place in a drawing-room, but it is the latest virtue on a battlefield when an important position has to be held against the full brunt of the enemy. And Lust, though maniacal and monstrous in its aberrations, cannot in the last resort be separated from its divine companion, Love. To let the more amiable passions have entire sway notoriously does not do: to turn your cheek, too literally, to the smiter, is (pace Tolstoy) only to encourage smiting; and when society becomes so altruistic that everybody runs to fetch the coal-scuttle we feel sure that something has gone wrong. The white-washed heroes of our biographies with their many virtues and no faults do not please us. We have an impression that the man without faults is, to say the least, a vague, uninteresting being—a picture without light and shade—and the conventional semi-pious classification of character into good and bad qualities (as if the good might be kept and the bad thrown away) seems both inadequate and false.”

Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) British poet and academic

Defence of Criminals: A Criticism of Morality (1889)

Love , Hate , Feeling , Soul

“Nature is like parting a curtain, you go into it. I want to draw a certain response like this.... that quality of response from people when they leave themselves behind, often experienced in nature, an experience of simple joy... My paintings are about merging, about formlessness... A world without objects, without interruption.”

Agnes Martin (1912–2004) American artist

Ann Wilson, from her talks in the Summer of 1972 at Agnes Martin's home in Mexico - an unpublished document; as quoted in Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art, Chapter 7 - 'Departures', Nancy Princenthal; Thames and Hudson, New York, p. 195-196
Wilson's visit to Cuba in Mexico was to work towards the publication accompanying Martin's exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia in 1973, curated by Suzanne Delehanty
1970's

People , World , Nature , Joy

“Ladies and gentlemen, it is with no ordinary feelings, I assure you, that I rise on this occasion to thank you for the very flattering manner in which you have received the last toast, and for the good wishes expressed therein. I cannot look around me, and see this vast assemblage of my friends and workpeople, without being moved. I feel gratified at this day's proceedings; I also feel greatly honoured by the presence of the nobleman at my side. I am more than all delighted at the presence of this vast assemblage of my workpeople. Perhaps it may be permitted me to remark that ten or twelve years ago I was looking forward to this day (on which I complete my his fiftieth year) as the period when I hoped to retire from business and enjoy myself in agricultural pursuits, which would be quite congenial to my mind and inclination. As the time drew near, looking at my large family (five of them being sons) I reversed that decision, and resolved to proceed a little longer and remain at the head of the firm. Having thus determined, I at once made up my mind to leave Bradford. I did not like to be a party to increasing that already overcrowded borough, but I looked around for a site suitable for a large manufacturing establishment, and I fixed upon this, as offering every capability for a first rate manufacturing and commercial establishment. It is also, from the beauty of its situation, and the salubrity of the air, a most desirable place for the erection of dwellings. Far be it from me to do anything to pollute the air or the water of the district. I shall do my utmost to avoid these evils, and I have no doubt of being successful. I hope to draw around me a population that will enjoy the beauties of this neighbourhood—a population of well paid, contented, happy operatives. I have given instructions to my architects (who are competent to carry them out) that nothing shall be spared to render the dwellings of the operatives a pattern to the country, and if my life is spared by Divine Providence, I hope to see satisfaction, contentment, and happiness around me.”

Titus Salt (1803–1876) English industrialist and philanthropist

The speech he made to the 3,500 guests (including his workers) at the banquet on 1853-09-20, which he held to celebrate both his fiftieth birthday and the opening of his new factory at Saltaire. [Inauguration of the works at Saltaire, The Bradford Observer, 1853-09-22, 8, http://find.galegroup.com/bncn/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&orientation=&scale=0.33&sort=DateAscend&docLevel=FASCIMILE&prodId=BNCN&tabID=T012&subjectParam=Locale%2528en%252C%252C%2529%253ALQE%253D%2528jn%252CNone%252C17%2529Bradford%2BObserver%253AAnd%253ALQE%253D%2528da%252CNone%252C10%252909%252F22%252F1853%2524&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchId=R2&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=11&qrySerId=Locale%28en%2C%2C%29%3ALQE%3D%28jn%2CNone%2C17%29Bradford+Observer%3AAnd%3ALQE%3D%28da%2CNone%2C10%2909%2F22%2F1853%24&subjectAction=DISPLAY_SUBJECTS&retrieveFormat=MULTIPAGE_DOCUMENT&enlarge=&bucketSubId=&inPS=true&userGroupName=brad&hilite=y&docPage=article&nav=prev&sgCurrentPosition=0&docId=R3207957429, 2012-06-07 (subscription site)]
A slightly edited version (in the third person) appears in [Holroyd, Abraham, 1873, 2000, Saltaire and its Founder, Piroisms Press, ISBN 0-9538601-0-8, 14-15]

Life , Family , Beauty , Hope

“Socialism, by organising production without class oppression, by ensuring the well-being of all members of the state, gives full play to the “sympathies” of the population, thereby promoting and greatly accelerating the drawing together and fusion of the nations.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Collected Works, Vol. 22, pp. 320–360.
Collected Works

“He came to love, He came to warn
Why do you weep on the day He's born?
He draws the path I walk upon
I died to live just for the Son
Find love, find peace
If you let Him increase”

Ysabella Brave (1979) American singer

"He Will Increase" (24 December 2009) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQEXWelvxOU

Love , Peace

“The problem was, I enjoyed Question Period too much and loved the challenge it provided. Far from being a dreaded burden, it had become an exciting part of my life; opposition members attacked me, I fought back, I won or lost or held them to draw, and the next day we did it all over again.”

Jean Chrétien (1934) 20th Prime Minister of Canada

Source: My Years As Prime Minister (2007), Chapter Four, One Day at a Time, p. 106-107

Love , Life , Question , Problem

“I have already informed my readers, that bull-baiting, or worrying of bulls with dogs, was one of the spectacles exhibited by the jugglers and their successors. It is also necessary to observe, that this cruel pastime was not confined to the boundaries of the bear-gardens; but was universally practiced on various occasions, in almost every town or village throughout the kingdom, and especially in market towns, where we find it was sanctioned by the law; and in some of them, I believe, the bull-rings, to which the unfortunate animals were fastened, are remaining to the present hour. It may seem strange, that the legislature should have permitted the exercise of such a barbarous diversion, which was frequently productive of much mischief by drawing together a large concourse of idle and dissipated persons, and affording them an opportunity of committing many grross disorders with impunity. Indeed a public bull-baiting rarely ended without some riot and confusion.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 277
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Public entertainment

Law , Dogs , Exercises , Universe

“PROUN alters the conventional forms of the arts and leaves behind the image of the petty individualist, who locked himself in his office and hid seated before a drawing easel, starting one picture and finishing another.
The future life — this is the reinforced concrete slab for the communist foundation of the nations of the entire world. With the aid of the PROUN one can build a unified city-commune on that foundation, intended for the life of all mankind.”

El Lissitsky (1890–1941) Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect

1915 - 1925, Theses on the 'PROUN': from painting to architecture' (1920)

Life , World , Art , Communication

““Whether there can be love without esteem?” Oh yes, thou dear, pure one! Love is of many kinds. Rousseau proves that by his reasoning and still better by his example. La pauvre Maman and Madame N____ love in very different fashions. But I believe there are many kinds of love which do not appear in Rousseau’s life. You are very right in saying that no true and enduring love can exist without cordial esteem; that every other draws regret after it, and is unworthy of any noble soul. One word about pietism. Pietists place religion chiefly in externals; in acts of worship performed mechanically, without aim, as bond-service to god; in orthodoxy of opinion; and they have this among other characteristic marks, that they give themselves more solicitude about other’s piety than their own. It is not right to hate these men,-we should hate no one, but to me they are very contemptible, for their character implies the most deplorable emptiness of the head, and the most sorrowful perversion of the heart. Such my dear friend never can be; she cannot become such, even were it possible-which it is not-that her character were perverted; she can never become such, her nature has too much reality in it. You trust in Providence, your anticipation of a future life, are wise, and Christian. I hope, I may venture to speak of myself, that no one will take me to be a pietist or stiff formalist, but I know no feeling more thoroughly interwoven with my soul than these are.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Johann Fichte Letter to Johanna Rahn from Johann Gottlieb Fichte's popular works: Memoir and The Nature of the Scholar https://archive.org/stream/johanngottlieb00fichuoft#page/14/mode/1up

Love , Life , Men , God

“Animation in itself is an art form, and that's the point I think always needs clarification. True animation exists without any background, or any color, or any sound, or anything else; it exists in your hand. And you can take it and flip it. […] What makes animation is the fact that you have a series of drawings that move. You don't even have to have a camera, you see; animation exists without it. If you want to broaden your audience, or make it more colorful or add music, then you put it under a camera one frame at a time, and then you run it at the same speed as you flip it, and then you have animation. If it depends basically upon soundtrack, or basically upon music, or color, graphic design, or anything else to sustain itself, then it is not unique to animation.”

Chuck Jones (1912–2002) American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films

Joe Adamson, "Witty Birds and Well-Drawn Cats: An Interview with Chuck Jones [1971]", in Chuck Jones: conversations, ed. Chuck Jones and Maureen Furniss (Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2005), 63.

Art , Music , Color , Thinking

“Sin and virtue are a game of resistance we play with God in His efforts to draw us towards perfection. The sense of virtue helps us to cherish our sins in secret.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Jnana

God , Secret , Game , Sense

“There was also a real Dayton out there, a charming small Ohio city, famous as the birthplace of the Wright Brothers. Its citizens energized us from the outset. Unlike the population of, say, Noew York, Geneva or Washington, which would scarcely notice another conference, Daytonians were proud to be part of history. Large signs at the commercial airport hailed Dayton as the "temporary center of international peace". The local newspapers and television stations covered the story from every angle, drawing the people deeper into the proceedings. When we ventured into a restaurant or a shopping center downtown, people crowded around, aying that they were praying for us. Warren Christopher was given at least one standing ovation in a restaurant. Families on the air base placed "candles of peace" in their front windows, and people gathered in peace vigils outside the base. One day they formed a "peace chain", although it was not large enough to surround the sprawling eight-thousand-acre base. Ohio's famous ethnic diversity was only on display. We did everything possible to emphasize the fact that in the American heartland people from every part of southeastern Europe lived together in peace, their competition restricted to softball games, church rivalries, and the occasional barroom fight. (…)”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), p. 234

People , Family , Peace , History

“Well, if our author in the wife offends
He has a husband that will make amends;
He draws him gentle, tender, and forgiving,
And sure such kind good creatures may be living.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Epilogue to Rowe's Jane Shore (1714).

Forgiveness

“This is a work which ought to be in every library in Canada; perhaps, after twenty-five years or so, it might silence the recurrent hubbub about nude paintings which is a feature of our national life. Yes, they are erotic. Yes, madam, the painters are often naughty men, and the models are sometimes bad girls. But there are elements involved in the painting of the nude which draw upon what is highest in art and express what is highest in mankind. Now, may we please look at the pictures?”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Review of The Painter's Eye and The Nude (1957).

Life , Men , Art , Girl

“Therefore, in drawing closer to the people, we must above all make common cause with those elements of the masses which, since the foundation of the state of Muscovy, have never ceased to protest, not only in words but in deeds, against everything directly or indirectly connected with the state: against the nobility, the bureaucracy, the clergy, the traders, and the parasitic kulaks. We must unite with the adventurous tribes of brigands, who are the only genuine revolutionaries in Russia.”

Sergey Nechayev book Catechism of a Revolutionary

Catechism of a Revolutionary (1869)

People

“Here are 3 drawings that I have made for You. It will be satisfactory, if it will meet your expectation and what it is for [to make a painting]. The two landscapes are thoughts, but the one that suggests the moonlight is the castle at Doorenwaart in Gelderland. I also painted a painting of that subject which I enjoyed a lot in Amsterdam [because, purchased there by A. B. Roothaan there] (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

Andreas Schelfhout (1787–1870) Dutch painter, etcher and lithographer

(original Dutch, citaat van Schelfhout, uit zijn brief:) Hierbij 3 teekeningen die ik voor UE. Vervaardigd hebt, het zal mij genoegelijk zijn, indien dezelve aan uwe verwachting en aan het [doel], waar voor zie dienen moeten [voor het maken van een schilderij], zullen beantwoorden. De 2 landschapjes zijn gedachten, maar het gene dat het maanlicht voorsteld, is het kasteel te Doorenwaart in Gelderland. Ik heb ook van dat zelve onderwerp een schilderij geschilderd waar van ik veel genoege gehad heb te Amsterdam [aangekocht door A. B. Roothaan aldaar]
Quote of Schelfhout in his letter to , 2 Dec. 1823; as cited in Andreas Schelfhout - landschapschilder in Den Haag, Cyp Quarles van Ufford, Primavera Pers, (ISBN 978-90-5997-066-3), Leiden, p. 49

Painting

“The era that humanity has entered is an era of industrial development and therefore the organisation of artistic elements must be applied to the design of the material elements of everyday life, i. e. to industry or to so-called production. The new industrial production, in which artistic creativity must participate, will differ radically from the traditional aesthetic approach to the object, in that primarily attention will be focused not on the artistic decoration of the object (applied art), but on the artistic organisation of the object in accordance with the principles of creating the most utilitarian object.... If any of the different types of fine art (i. e., easel painting, drawing, engraving, sculpture, etc.) can still retain some purpose, they will do so only * 1. while they remain as the laboratory phase in our search for essential new forms * 2. insofar as they serve as supportive projects and schemes for constructions and utilitarian and industrially manufactured objects that have yet to be realised”

Lyubov Popova (1889–1924) Russian artist

Liubov Popova, untitled manuscript, signed and dated December 1921, Manuscript Department, State Tretjakov Gallery, Moscow, (fond 148, op.17, l. 3–4); transl. John Bowlt; the same text is reproduced in Women Artists of the Russian Avant-Garde 1910–1930, Cologne 1979, p. 68

Life , Art , Search , Support

“A new theory by the author has been added, which draws the physical inferences consequent on the extension of the foundations of geometry beyond Reimann… and represents an attempt to derive from world-geometry not only gravitational but also electromagnetic phenomena. Even if this theory is still only in its infant stage, I feel convinced that it contains no less truth than Einstein's Theory of Gravitation—whether this amount of truth is unlimited or, what is more probable, is bounded by the Quantum Theory.”

Hermann Weyl (1885–1955) German mathematician

From the Author's Preface to Third Edition (1919)
Space—Time—Matter (1952)

Truth , World , Feeling

“The BJP is not a communal party; it cannot be, for the simple reason that Hindus have never been, and are not, a community in the accepted sense of the term. They represent an ancient civilization not known either to draw a boundary between the faithful and the faithless, the blessed and the damned, or to engage in heresy hunting and its counterpart, persecution of other faiths. Hindus are, in western terms, pagans.”

Girilal Jain (1924–1993) Indian journalist

Page 149, The Hindu Phenomenon, ISBN 81-86112-32-4.
On Hindutva

Faith , Communication , Sense

“Beforehand I don't make any drawing of the object or objects which I want to paint on the canvas or panel.... but I start directly to situate the designed plan on the canvas - After having thoroughly sketched and thought over my composition, especially the arrangement of light and dark, I start to paint it broadly with oil-paint and try as much as possible to achieve the hue or the colouring, in which I want to see my landscape.... when it is definitely completed.”

Barend Cornelis Koekkoek (1803–1862) painter from the Northern Netherlands

(original Dutch, citaat van B.C. Koekkoek:) Ik maak vooraf geene tekeningen van het voorwerp of de voorwerpen, die ik op het doek of paneel wil schilderen.. ..maar begin dadelijk het ontworpen plan op het doek te plaatsen – Na mijne compositie eerst behoorlijk geschetst en beredeneerd te hebben, voornamelijk de schikking van licht en donker, begin ik dezelve met olieverw breed te schilderen, zoveel trachtende de tint of het coloriet er in te brengen, in welke ik mijn landschap.. ..wil gezien hebben.. ..als het geheel afgeschilderd is.
Source: Herinneringen aan en Mededeelingen van…' (1841), p. 98-99

Light , Painting

“Therefore, when a person refuses to come to Christ it is never just because of lack of evidence or because of intellectual difficulties: at root, he refuses to come because he willingly ignores and rejects the drawing of God's Spirit on his heart. No one in the final analysis really fails to become a Christian because of lack of arguments; he fails to become a Christian because he loves darkness rather than light and wants nothing to do with God.”

William Lane Craig (1949) American Christian apologist and evangelist

Source: Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics (1994), pp. 35-36.

Love , God , Light , Heart

“I'm afraid to win, and afraid to lose; I hate a draw and can't stop competing; otherwise I'm fine.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Hate

“For such is the work of philosophy: it cures souls, draws off vain anxieties, confers freedom from desires, drives away fears.”
Nam efficit hoc philosophia: medetur animis, inanes sollicitudines detrahit, cupiditatibus liberat, pellit timores.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Book II, Chapter IV; translation by Andrew P. Peabody
Tusculanae Disputationes – Tusculan Disputations (45 BC)

Fear , Soul , Freedom

“The British monarchy inculcates unthinking credulity and servility. It forms a heavy layer on the general encrustation of our unreformed political institutions. It is the gilded peg from which our unlovely system of social distinction and hierarchy depends. It is an obstacle to the objective public discussion of our own history. It tribalises politics. It entrenches the absurdity of the hereditary principle. It contributes to what sometimes looks like an enfeeblement of the national intelligence, drawing from our press and even from some of our poets the sort of degrading and abnegating propaganda that would arouse contempt if displayed in Zaire or Romania. It is, in short, neither dignified nor efficient.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

1990s, The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favourite Fetish

History , Intelligence , Dependency

“The way that we draw faces says so much about the way that we see ourselves and the way that we see each other.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Derren Brown Plays Russian Roulette Live (2003)

Way

“As a theorist I have great advantages. All I need is a pencil (now a ball pen) and an empty pad of paper. There are analysts who sit and look vacantly out the window, but after the age of 20 I was not one of them. I ought to envy the new generation who have grown up with the computer, but I don’t. None of them known to me sits idly at the console, improvising and experimenting in the way that a composer does at the piano. That ought to become increasingly possible. But up to now, in my observation, the computer is largely a black box into which researchers feed raw input and out of from which they draw various summarizing measures and simulations. Not having access to look around in the box, the investigator has less intuitive familiarity with the data than used to be the case in the bad old days.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

“My Life Philosophy: Policy Credos and Working Ways,” in M. Szenberg (ed.) Eminent Economists: Their Life Philosophies (1992)
1980s–1990s

Age , Way , Envy , Box

“I saw that everything famous and beautiful in the world, if we judge by the descriptions and drawings of writers and artists, always loses when we go to see it and examine it closely.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), 1997 reprint, vol. 11, chap. 4, p. 112

World , Beauty

“Back and forth the fantastic tableaux would spin, past his cruel plebe hazing, the self-discovery at the West Texas Military Academy, the patriarchal Judge MacArthur, all beard and cigar smoke, presiding over dynastic feats at Washington's 1201 N Street; the chimes of the drawing-room clock there telling off the quarters; the ceremonial changing of the guard at Leavenworth; his father's tales of Sherman's dauntless Boys in Blue; his mother's imperious commands to fight and fight and never lower his blade short of victory; the clean crack of Krag rifles and the warm prickling of desert sand as he played with his brother outside the fort stockade; the rumbling of the sunset gun and Pinky's face tilting downward, her lambent smile gilding the child's upturned features while he clutched at her cascading skirts; the yellow notes of the bugles as he stirred in his cradle; the chant of sergeants hawking cadence on the parade ground outside; and, snapping proudly in the overarching sky above him, the flag, and the flag, and the flag.”

William Manchester (1922–2004) (April 1, 1922 – June 1, 2004) American author, journalist and historian

Source: American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964 (1978), p. 709

Smile , Boy , Change , Past

“who will draw the calvary in
risk his very own precious skin
to make our Angelinia a free and peaceful land again?
Henry
who'll love a poor orphan child?
Henry Darger”

Natalie Merchant (1963) American singer-songwriter

Song lyrics, Motherland (2001), Henry Darger

Love , Peace

“Our army, if it exists for honorable purposes only, will draw to it honorable men. It will call to it the best men of our race- men of skill and culture. It will not be recruited as so many modern nations are, from those who are industrially useless.”

Michael Collins (Irish leader) (1890–1922) Irish revolutionary leader

A Path to Freedom (2010), p. 64

Men

“Just at the time I got your letter Mr. Angus sent me the 'Scotsman' [magazine]. You say some critics have thought it fair to make it the basis of a personal attack, and it is very critic-like. Critic means knife, means dissection, means wisdom, means perfection. Art is stupid, art-less. That is a hard job for the critic to understand. I like your book because it is 'stupid', like Japanese; which means done for the love of it in itself; not for gain or success. You don't go to criticise a Japanese drawing and say it is out of shape, out of drawing, no perspective nor anatomy. This is only for the critic to show his knowledge by killing the things; those stupid fellows do harm, like Whistler says, with their learnings. They must have schools and applications of knowledge. Thackeray calls them scavengers - scavengers are at least necessary, those fellows are for no good..”

Matthijs Maris (1839–1917) Dutch painter

Quote of Matthijs Maris, in his letter to David Croal Thomson (Oct. 1890), as cited in: The Brothers Maris (James – Matthew – William), ed. Charles Holme; text: D.C. Thomson https://ia800204.us.archive.org/1/items/cu31924016812756/cu31924016812756.pdf; publishers, Offices of 'The Studio', London - Paris, 1907, p. BMxv p. BMxviii

Love , Wisdom , Books , Stupidity

“Playboy: Then for now, aren't you asking home-computer buyers to invest $3000 in what is essentially an act of faith?
Jobs: In the future, it won't be an act of faith. The hard part of what we're up against now is that people ask you about specifics and you can't tell them. A hundred years ago, if somebody had asked Alexander Graham Bell, "What are you going to be able to do with a telephone?" he wouldn't have been able to tell him the ways the telephone would affect the world. He didn't know that people would use the telephone to call up and find out what movies were playing that night or to order some groceries or call a relative on the other side of the globe. But remember that first the public telegraph was inaugurated, in 1844. It was an amazing breakthrough in communications. You could actually send messages from New York to San Francisco in an afternoon. People talked about putting a telegraph on every desk in America to improve productivity. But it wouldn't have worked. It required that people learn this whole sequence of strange incantations, Morse code, dots and dashes, to use the telegraph. It took about 40 hours to learn. The majority of people would never learn how to use it. So, fortunately, in the 1870s, Bell filed the patents for the telephone. It performed basically the same function as the telegraph, but people already knew how to use it. Also, the neatest thing about it was that besides allowing you to communicate with just words, it allowed you to sing.
Playboy: Meaning what?
Jobs: It allowed you to intone your words with meaning beyond the simple linguistics. And we're in the same situation today. Some people are saying that we ought to put an IBM PC on every desk in America to improve productivity. It won't work. The special incantations you have to learn this time are "slash q-zs" and things like that. The manual for WordStar, the most popular word-processing program, is 400 pages thick. To write a novel, you have to read a novel—one that reads like a mystery to most people. They're not going to learn slash q-z any more than they're going to learn Morse code. That is what Macintosh is all about. It's the first "telephone" of our industry. And, besides that, the neatest thing about it, to me, is that the Macintosh lets you sing the way the telephone did. You don't simply communicate words, you have special print styles and the ability to draw and add pictures to express yourself.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

Steve Jobs, Playboy, Feb 1985, as quoted in “Steve Jobs Imagines 'Nationwide' Internet in 1985 Interview” https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/steve-jobs-imagines-nationwide-internet-in-1985-intervi-1671246589, Matt Novak, 12/15/14 2:20pm Paleofuture, Gizmodo.
1980s

People , World , Faith , Way

“I have never learned to draw a hand well enough, so why should I stop trying now?”

Jack Levine (1915–2010) American artist

Selden Rodman, Conversations With Artists, 1956.

Learning

“Schools have no use except for discerning the analytic procedures of art. No school is capable of pressing on to a synthesis in isolation. Painting can not, without falling into abstraction, let a partial aspect of art dominate, whether it be drawing, color, composition, or any other one of the extraordinary multiplicity of means the totality of which alone constitutes this art.”

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) French painter

1860s, Realist Manifesto' - an open letter, 1861

School , Art , Color , Painting

“Old men's prayers for death are lying prayers, in which they abuse old age and long extent of life. But when death draws near, not one is willing to die, and age no longer is a burden to them.”

Euripidés Alcestis

Source: Alcestis (438 BC), l. 669

Life , Death , Men , Age

“Nay, but weigh well what you presume to swear!
Oaths are of dreadful Weight—and, if they're false,
Draw down Damnation.”

Richard Savage (1697–1743) English poet

Sir Thomas Overbury (1724), Act II, scene i.

Falseness

“One afternoon I went to visit him. [Jacob, an older and close friend of Jopie - a real freebooter]. I knew he was home, I took pen, ink and my sketchbook with me and did half a liter of gin in my pocket. He lived in the back of an alley and was sitting in his chair by the window.... I told him, 'You will get the whole bottle, but one condition. I want to make a beautiful drawing of you, so first you have to sit still for twenty minutes and look at me closely. If I look at you and you don't look at me, the deal is over....'Okay', he said. I never had a model like him before... Stock-still he sat.... and looked at me without a single blink of his eyes. Within half an hour he was there on the paper - razor-sharp... While I am writing this down, it is as if he is sitting in front of me again..”

Jopie Huisman (1922–2000) Dutch painter

translation, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van Jopie Huisman, in het Nederlands: Op een middag ging ik bij hem op bezoek. [bij Jacob, een oudere en hechte vriend van Jopie en een echte vrijbuiter]. Ik wist dat hij thuis was, nam pen en inkt en mijn schetsboek mee en deed een halve liter jenever in mijn zak. Hij woonde achter in een steegje en zat in zijn stoel bij het raam.. .Ik zei: 'Je krijgt de hele fles van me, onder één voorwaarde. Ik wil een prachtige tekening van je maken en daarvoor moet je eerst twintig minuten doodstil zitten en me strak aankijken. Als ik naar jou kijk en jij kijkt niet naar mij, dan gaat het over.. ..'Afgesproken', zei hij. Ik heb nog nooit zo’n model gehad!.. .Doodstil zat hij.. ..en keek me zonder ook maar één keer met zijn ogen te knipperen strak in mijn gezicht. Binnen een half uur stond hij haarscherp op het papier.. .Terwijl ik dit opschreef was het net alsof hij weer voor me zat.
Source: Jopie de Verteller' (2010) - postumous, p. 58

Beauty , Home

“Protocols
Number 20, paras. 26-32
The budgets of income and expenditure will be carried out side by side that they may not be obscured by distance one to another.
…The first irregularity, as we shall point out, consists in their beginning with drawing up a single budget which year after year grows owing to the following cause: this budget is dragged out to half the year, ten they demand a
Graves: Clearly, the “Protocols” author adapts the text of “Dialogues” so carelessly in his hasty attempt to Prove a Jewish conspiracy!”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.83

Quotes about drawing page 14

Quotes about drawing
page 14