„The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting.“
— Vincent Van Gogh Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890) 1853 - 1890
Quotes about painting
A collection of quotes on the topic of painting.
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„It was a perpetual holiday – and what an assortment of people. You could still enjoy yourself in those days! Machinery didn't take up the whole of life; there was time for living, and we made the most of it... I found as many magnificent girls to paint as I wanted; in those days one wasn't reduced to following a little model around for an hour and then being treated as a disgusting old man at the end of it.“
— Pierre-Auguste Renoir French painter and sculptor 1841 - 1919
undated quotes, p. 28 : Renoir's quote to Vollard referring to the Isle Grenouillere, where he painted in 1869, together with Claude Monet.
„Modern paintings are like women, you'll never enjoy them if you try to understand them. “
— Freddie Mercury British singer, songwriter and record producer 1946 - 1991
„Painting has to get back to its original goal, examining the inner lives of human beings.“
— Pierre Bonnard French painter and printmaker 1867 - 1947
„I am only interested in painting the actual person; in doing a painting of them, not in using them to some ulterior end of art. For me, to use someone doing something not native to them would be wrong.“
— Lucian Freud British painter and engraver 1922 - 2011
Lucian Freud: Paintings (1987), p. 20
„The murderer smiles palely in wine,
Death's horror grips the sick.
Excoriated and naked, the nun prays
Before the Savior's agony on the cross.
The mother sings quietly in sleep.
Peacefully the child looks into the night
With eyes that are completely truthful.
In the whorehouse laughter rings.
By candlelight down in the cellar hole
The dead one paints with white hand
A grinning silence on the wall.
The sleeper whispers still.“
— Georg Trakl austrian poet 1887 - 1914
"Romance in the Night"
„I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer. We’d make a good team. I don’t want to ask you any favors, but if you have time – and from what I saw, you have plenty – I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I’ve got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently. Here’s the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That’s what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease. I want to leave a mark. But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, “They’ll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion. (Okay, maybe I’m not such a shitty writer. But I can’t pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.) We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can’t stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly and useless – epically useless in my current state – but I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either. People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm. The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox. After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark almost blue color, and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar. A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren’t allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, “She’s still taking on water.”“
— John Green, book The Fault in Our Stars
The Fault in Our Stars (2012), A desert blessing, an ocean curse. What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers."
Augustus "Gus" Waters, p. 310-313
„But if cattle and horses and lions had hands
or could paint with their hands and create works such as men do,
horses like horses and cattle like cattle
also would depict the gods' shapes and make their bodies
of such a sort as the form they themselves have.“
— Xenophanes Presocratic philosopher -570 - -475 BC
ἀλλ᾽ εἰ χεῖρας ἔχον βόες <ἵπποι τ᾽> ἠὲ λέοντες
ἢ γράψαι χείρεσσι καὶ ἔργα τελεῖν ἅπερ ἄνδρες,
ἵπποι μέν θ᾽ ἵπποισι βόες δέ τε βουσὶν ὁμοίας
καί <κε> θεῶν ἰδέας ἔγραφον καὶ σώματ᾽ ἐποίουν
τοιαῦθ᾽ οἷόν περ καὐτοὶ δέμας εἶχον <ἕκαστοι>.
Fragment 15 (D-K)
„One day I had painted a bunch of keys on a canvas, my bunch of keys. I didn't know what to put next to them. I needed something that would be the absolute opposite of a bunch of keys. So when I finished work I went out. I had only walked a few yard when what should I see in a shop windows? A postcard of the Mona Lisa! At once I knew that was what I needed; what could have made a greater contrast to the keys?... Then I also added a can of sardines. It was such a strong contrast.“
— Fernand Léger French painter 1881 - 1955
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1950's, on his painting 'La Joconde aux Clés'
Quote from La vie fait de l'Oeuvre de Fernand Léger, Dora Vallier, 'Cahiers d'Art', 2, 1954, p. 153
„The arts (painting, poetry, etc.) are not just these. Eating, drinking, walking are also arts; every act is an art.“
— César Vallejo Peruvian writer 1892 - 1938
Aphorisms (2002), Las artes (pintura, poesía, etc.) no son solo éstas. Artes son también comer, beber, caminar: todo acto es un arte.
p. 60
„In contrast to the flux and muddle of life, art is clarity and enduring presence. In the stream of life, few things are perceived clearly because few things stay put. Every mood or emotion is mixed or diluted by contrary and extraneous elements. The clarity of art—the precise evocation of mood in the novel, or of summer twilight in a painting—is like waking to a bright landscape after a long fitful slumber, or the fragrance of chicken soup after a week of head cold.“
— Yi-Fu Tuan Chinese-American geographer 1930
Passing Strange and Wonderful: Aesthetics, Nature, and Culture, ch. 10 (1993).
„Near the northern boundary of Malaya, Japanese took a sudden interest in taking photos and setting up easels to paint. The same thing happened in Johor Bahru. A causeway crosses the Straits of Johor. If you're facing Singapore island, on the left side of the causeway was Seletar. The Japanese would set up easels and paint Seletar. All of them were spies.“
— Robert Kuok Malaysian businessman 1923
Cap 2 "The Wuhan Songsters"
„I, Titian of Cadore, having studied painting from childhood upwards, and desirous of fame rather than profit, wish to serve the Doge and Signori, rather than his Highness the Pope and other Signori, who in past days, and even now, have urgently asked to employ me: I am therefore anxious, if it should appear feasible, to paint in the Hall of Council, beginning, if it please their sublimity, with the canvas of 'The Battle' on the side towards the Piazza, which is so difficult that no one as yet has had courage to attempt it…“
— Titian Italian painter 1477 - 1576
1510-1540, Source: http://www.everypainterpaintshimself.com/article/titians_battle_of_cadore_1538-9
Quote from a petition presented by Titian, and read on the 31st of May, 1513, before the Council of ten of Venice; as quoted by J.A.Y. Crowe & G.B. Cavalcaselle in Titian his life and times - With some account..., publisher John Murray, London, 1877, p. 153-154
The chiefs of the Council on the day in question accepted Titian's offer. Sharp monitions reminded him in 1518, 1522 and 1537 that he should complete 'The Battle', he did not until 1539
„I believe easel painting to be a dying form, and the tendency of modern feeling is toward the wall picture or mural..“
— Jackson Pollock American artist 1912 - 1956
1940's, In his application for a grant given by the Guggenheim Foundation 1944; as quoted in Abstract expressionism, Barbara Hess, Taschen Köln, 2006, p. 9
