Quotes about painting (2699 quotes, page 12)

“To our western eyes, the painted images are the most prominent component of a corpus of artistic expression. This Western bias, a particularly Eurocentric bias, has been pervasive and deep. …it has resulted in a lack of attention to, and concern about, prehistoric art of equal and sometimes greater antiquity in eastern and southern Africa.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human (1992)

Art

“Artists encounter the landscape they propose to paint — they look at it, observe it from this angle and that. They are, as we say, absorbed in it. Or, in the case of abstract painters, the encounter may be with an idea, an inner vision, that in turn may be led off by the brilliant colors on the palette or the inviting rough whiteness of the canvas.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Ch 2 : The Nature of Creativity, p. 41
The Courage to Create (1975)

Color , Idea

“Halfway up the slope, guarded by a group of tall, slim, cypress-trees, nestled a small strawberry-pink villa, like some exotic fruit lying in the greenery. The cypress-trees undulated gently in the breeze, as if they were busily painting the sky a still brighter blue for our arrival.
The villa was small and square, standing in its tiny garden with an air of pink-faced determination. Its shutters had been faded by the sun to a delicate creamy-green, cracked and bubbled in places. The garden, surrounded by tall fuschia hedges, had the flower beds worked in complicated geometrical patterns, marked with smooth white stones. The white cobbled paths, scarcely as wide as a rake's head, wound laboriously round beds hardly larger than a big straw hat, beds in the shape of stars, half-moons, triangles, and circles all overgrown with a shaggy tangle of flowers run wild. Roses dropped petals that seemed as big and smooth as saucers, flame-red, moon-white, glossy, and unwrinkled; marigolds like broods of shaggy suns stood watching their parent's progress through the sky. In the low growth the pansies pushed their velvety, innocent faces through the leaves, and the violets drooped sorrowfully under their heart-shaped leaves. The bougainvillaea that sprawled luxuriously over the tiny iron balcony was hung, as though for a carnival, with its lantern-shaped magenta flowers. In the darkness of the fuschia-hedge a thousand ballerina-like blooms quivered expectantly. The warm air was thick with the scent of a hundred dying flowers, and full of the gentle, soothing whisper and murmur of insects.”

Gerald Durrell book My Family and Other Animals

My Family and Other Animals (1956)

Star , Flowers , Lying , Parent

“You use things; the idea is, of course, to eliminate things [in making a picture]. And just as fifteen or eighteen years ago [when Guston made whole figurative series of children's pictures: 'all sort of props and so on'] I stretched out to get that, - put it in and took it out - to get that look in that's kid's eye and the way his mouth was open or wasn't - I mean a very particular kind of look - I'd do the same now. In other words, I can't find any freedom in abstract painting [but Guston did abstract painting in 1960 - till in 1967 he moved to figuration]. I'am just as stuck with locations, a few areas of colour in relation to some kind of totality that I want, as I was before. And so the problem of figuration is somehow irrelevant to me. I think some of the best painting done in New York today is figuration, but it's not recognised as such... Well I think of my pictures as a kind of figuration... I think every good painter here in New York really paints a self-portrait..”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

Source: 1950 - 1960, Interview with David Sylvester, BBC (March 1960), pp. 92-93

Children , Way , Idea , Problem

“I am anxious that the world should be inclined to look to painters for information about painting. I hope to show that ours is a regularly taught profession; that it is scientific as well as poetic; that imagination alone never did, and never can, produce works that are to stand by a comparison with realities;; and to show, by tracing the connecting links in the history of landscape painting, that no great painter was ever self-taught.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Quote from 'The History of Landscape Painting,' first lecture, Royal Institution (26 May 1836), from notes taken by C.R. Leslie
1830s, his lectures History of Landscape Painting (1836)

World , Hope , Imagination , History

“I've always been told that I was a painter's painter... What does that mean?... That painters like my painting and the big wide world overlooks it, I suppose?... Well, I know... To me, it would have meant that - this is pre this new rage in buying and selling paintings - that, I think, that the formal values, like light, space, color, all those things that a painting is made up of, as well as the Jacob going up the ladder or Venus on the half shell or something [chuckles] would be what interested the painter. And perhaps the public would want the picture of the Christ child, so to speak. You know what I mean.”

Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) American painter

Tape number two, side A
1975 - 1992, Oral history interview with Joan Mitchell, 1986

World , Color , Thinking , Light

“Genius is the aptitude for seeing invisible things, for stirring intangible things, for painting things that have no features.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

“This exchange – mainly in the form of letters [between the brothers van Gogh] – was not only about painting and art, but covered everything to do with one's existence and the philosophical or religious colouring, in a word: for the reader of the letters written by Vincent to his brother a total of human behaviour is revealed that of the dual being of van Gogh. This is how my first wish and then obsession was started, to build a monument for the two van Gogh brothers.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

Source: 1940 - 1960, Les frères Van Gogh, origine et justification', c. 1955, pp. 67-69

Art

“I hung Baziote's [painting] show with him at Peggy's in 1944. After it was up and we had stood in silence looking at it for a while, I noticed he had turned white... Suddenly he [Baziotes] looked at me and said: 'You're the one I trust; if you tell me the show is no good, I'll take it right down and cancel it.'.... you see, at the opposite side of the coin of the abstract expressionist's ambition and of out not giving a damn, was also not knowing whether our pictures were even pictures, let alone whether they were any good…”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

William Baziotes – paintings and drawings, curated by Michael Preble, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 2004, p. 181
after 1970

Silence

“I like the heat the tenderness the edible the lusciousness the song of a single person the bathtub full of water to bathe myself beneath the water. I like Ucello, Grunewald, Ingres, the drawings and sketches for paintings of Seurat and that man [=Pablo Picasso ]. I measure all things by weight.”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

1942 - 1948
Source: text for MoMA, describing the 'Garden in Sochi' - series, 26 June 1942

Water , Drawing , Personality

“When you review an exhibition of paintings you don't compose a painting about it, when you review a film you don't make a film about it and when you review a new CD you don't make a little CD about it. But when you review a prose-narrative then you write a prose-narrative about that prose-narrative and those who write the secondary prose-narrative, let's face it, must have once had dreams of writing the primary prose-narrative. And so there is a kind of hierarchy of envy and all those other things.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Interview with Ramona Koval on Radio National (4 September 1999) http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/bwriting/stories/s21638.htm

Dreams , Envy

“There is something ridiculous and miserly in the myth we inherit from abstract art: That painting is autonomous, pure and for itself, and therefore we habitually analyze its ingredients and define its limits. But painting is 'impure'. It is the adjustment of 'impurities', which forces painting’s continuity. We are image-makers and image-ridden. There are no 'wiggly or straight lines' or any other elements. You work until you vanish. The picture isn’t finished if they are seen.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

transcript of the panel, March 1960, held at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art, as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p.61
1950 - 1960

Art

“The atrocities are, for me, the most horrible part of the accusation in this trial. They thought that I took it lightly or laughed about it or some such nonsense, in court. That is definitely a mistake. I am the type of person who is naturally against such things and my own psychological reaction is to laugh or smile in the face of adversity. Perhaps that explains my attitude in court. Besides, I was not to blame for these horrors. It's not just that I am a hard man because of my long experience in the army and in politics. It's true that I saw plenty in the First World War and during the air raids and at the front in this war. But I was always a person who felt the suffering of others. To paint me as an unfeeling ogre who laughs in court at the atrocities is stupid.”

Hermann Göring (1893–1946) German politician and military leader

To Leon Goldensohn (24 May 1946)
The Nuremberg Interviews (2004)

War , Stupidity , World , Smile

“It is true that Donatello, who afterwards did the ornamentation of the other organ opposite this one, displayed much more judgment and skill than Luca, as will be said in the proper place, because he did almost the whole of the work in the rough as it were, not delicately finishing it, so that it should appear much better at a distance than Luca's; as it does, for with all his care and skill the eye cannot appreciate it well because of the very polish and finish, which are lost in the distance, as it can the almost purely rough hewn work of Donato. To this matter artists should devote much attention, because experience shows that all things seen at a distance, whether they be paintings or sculptures or any other like thing, are bolder and more vigorous in appearance if skilfully hewn in the rough than if they are carefully finished. Besides the effect obtained by distance, it often happens that these rough sketches, which are born in an instant in the heat of inspiration, express the idea of their author in a few strokes, while on the other hand too much effort and diligence sometimes sap the vitality and powers of those who never know when to leave off.”

Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) Italian painter, architect, writer and historian

Volume 2. p. 28
The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, 1900

Idea , Effort , Appearance

“The more abstract is form, the more clear and direct is its appeal. In any composition the material side may be more or less omitted in proportion as the forms used are more or less material, and for them substituted pure abstractions, or largely dematerialized objects. The more an artist uses these abstracted forms, the deeper and more confidently will he advance into the kingdom of the abstract. And after him will follow the gazer at his pictures, who also will have gradually acquired a greater familiarity with the language of that kingdom.
Must we then abandon utterly all material objects and paint solely in abstractions? The problem of harmonizing the appeal of the material and the non-material shows us the answer to this question. As every word spoken rouses an inner vibration, so likewise does every object represented. To deprive oneself of this possibility is to limit one's powers of expression. That is at any rate the case at present. But besides this answer to the question, there is another, and one which art can always employ to any question beginning with "must": There is no "must" in art, because art is free.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

VI. The language of Form and Colour
1910 - 1915, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1911

Art , Confidence , Question , Problem

“Shall the painter then.... decide upon painting? Shall he be the critic and sole authority? Aggressive as is this supposition, I fear that, in the length of time, his assertion alone has established what even the gentleman of the quill accept as the canons of art, and recognize as the masterpieces of work. Seurat's painting of the Grande Jatte proved extremely influential.”

James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) American-born, British-based artist

quote of Whistler, (1892) In: Gentle Art of making Enemies, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1922, p. 30
1870 - 1903

Fear , Art , Time

“One day Pierre Loeb said to me that the ideal picture is one which is completely clear in the artist's mind before he puts a mark on the canvas, and this was, at any rate in this period.... Léger's opinion. It is the basis on which classical art is built. Therefore the setting-down of the picture on the canvas is in itself something quite unimportant. This is connected with [Fernand] Léger's hatred of textural effects in painting. But I love these effects. I remember that I was once told off because I had applied a thick layer of color instead of the thin and even layer that Léger wanted. To him that was not painting but mere color. If he could have got a machine instead of a brush to apply the color, he would have done so.”

Asger Jorn (1914–1973) Danish artist

Quote in Jorn's letter, 1952; as cited on the website of the Jorn Museum 'Articles' by Jorn http://www.museumjorn.dk/en/article_presentation.asp?AjrDcmntId=255,
his critical comment on the art teachings of Fernand Léger, which Jorn started to follow circa 1936, in Paris.
1949 - 1958, Various sources

Love , Art , Color

“The art of painting is the Art of hollowing out a canvas.”

Georges Seurat (1859–1891) French painter

from an essay by Roger Fry, in 'The Dial', Camden, New Jersey, September 1926
undated quotes

Art

“Success for a woman means absolute surrender, in whatever direction. Whether she paints a picture, or loves a man, there is no division of labor possible in her economy. To the attainment of any end worth living for, a symmetrical sacrifice of her nature is compulsory upon her.”

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911) American author, intellectual and feminist

The Study of Avis (1877)

Love , Nature , Success

“In Braque and Gris, they seemed to have idea of the organization beforehand in their mind. With Bonnard, he is organizing in front of you. You can tell in Leger just when he discovered how to make it like an engine.... What's wrong with that? You see it in Barney (=Barnett Newman) too, that he knows what a painting should be. He paints as he thinks painting should be, which is pretty heroic..”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

1950's, Evergreen Review, 1958

Idea , Thinking

“One world and then another, running like a chain. One world treading on the heels of another world that plodded just ahead. One world’s tomorrow, another world’s today. And yesterday is tomorrow, and tomorrow is the past.
Except, there wasn’t any past. No past, that was, except the figment of remembrance that flitted like a night-winged thing in the shadow of one’s mind. No past that one could reach. No pictures painted on the wall of time. No film that one could run backwards and see what-once-had-been…
One road was open, but another road was closed. Not closed, of course, for it had never been. For there wasn’t any past, there never had been any, there wasn’t room for one. Where there should have been a past there was another world.”

Clifford D. Simak book City

Source: City (1952), Chapter 7, “Aesop” (pp. 195-196)

World , Time , Past , Night

“The weak, sensual, pleasure-loving French. You know, not going to war because they’re all still in bed at two in the afternoon, with the sheets coiled about their knees, lying, there scratching themselves, smoking a Gauloise inside a Gitane, sweating Nice sancerre. Before one of them sloughs off the sheets to pad around the kitchen naked. No, not naked, naked from the waist down. To emphasise their nakedity. Picking up yesterday's croissant crumbs with their sweaty feet. Slashing yesterday's paintings.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

Monster (2004)

Love , War , Pleasure , Lying

“Ask yourself: "Do I police what people say for political propriety? … do I scrutinize great literature, music, art, television or comedy for signs of so-called sexism, racism, elitism, homophobia, antisemitism and meanness? Am I incapable of appreciating a superbly written script or book; a sublime painting or symphony; a smart stand-up routine, if only because the material and its creator violate the received laws of political correctness?”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“Joan Rivers – antidote to PC totalitarianism,” http://www.quarterly-review.org/?p=2781 The Quarterly Review, July 11, 2014.
2010s, 2014

People , Books , Law , Art

“The paintings of Francis Bacon to my eye are very beautiful. The paintings of Bosch or Goya are to my eye very beautiful. I've also stood in front of those same paintings with people who've said, "let's get on to the Botticellis as soon as possible."”

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

I have lingered, of course.
American Heroes #174

People , Beauty

“What surprising fellows those French painters are. A Millet, Delacroix, Corot, Troyon, Daubigny, Rousseau, and a Daumier.... Something else about Delacroix - he had a discussion with a friend about the question of working absolutely from nature, and said on that occasion that one should take one's 'studies' from nature - but that the 'actual painting' had to be made 'by heart'. This friend was walking along the boulevard when they had this discussion - which was already fairly heated. When they parted the other man was still not entirely persuaded. After they parted, Delacroix let him stroll on for a bit - then (making a trumpet of his two hands) bellowed after him in the middle of the street - to the consternation of the worthy passers-by:
'By heart! By heart!”

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

(Par coeur! Par coeur!)
I can't tell you how much I enjoyed reading this article and some other things about Delacroix..
In his letter to Anthon van Rappard, from Nuenen, The Netherlands, 8 and c. 15 August 1885 - original manuscript, letter 526, at Van Gogh Museum, location Amsterdam - inv. nos. b8390 V/2006, http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let526/letter.html
See for this anecdote, taken from Charles Blanc, Les artistes de mon temps, letter 496, n. 7.
1880s, 1885

Question , Nature , Study , Reading

“Older children always sit down to paint or write after they have seen a picture or read a story that appeals to them, and attempt to create. So life ought to be a struggle of desire towards adventures whose nobility will fertilise the soul and lead to the conception of new, glorious things. To avoid the ordeal of emotion that leads to the conception is the impulse of death. Sterility is the deadly sin. Today so many of our activities are sterile. Our upper classes are impotent by reason of their soft living. Our lower classes have had their vitality sweated out of them by their filthy labours: they can only bear dead things.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

"The Gospel According to Granville-Parker", in The Freewoman (7 March 1912); re-published in The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West, 1911-17 (1982), p. 21

Life , Death , Children , Soul

“Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.”

John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) American painter

Quoted in Bentley and Esar, Treasury of Humorous Quotations (1951)

Time

“Every other art,—as poetry, music, painting,—may be practised without the process showing forth the rules according to which it is conducted;—but in the self-cognizant art of the philosopher, no step can be taken without declaring the grounds upon which it proceeds.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 14

Art , Music

“I am well aware that a painting must inevitably be a bizarre, incomprehensible thing.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

1970's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970 - 1972)

“Instrumentation is to music precisely what color is to painting.”

Hector Berlioz (1803–1869) French Romantic composer

Cette face de l’instrumentation est exactement, en musique, ce que le coloris est en peinture.
A travers chants (1862), ch. 1 http://www.hberlioz.com/Writings/ATC01.htm; Elizabeth Csicsery-Rónay (trans.) The Art of Music and Other Essays (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994) p. 5.

Music , Color

“There are two problems in painting. One is to find out what painting is and the other is to find out how to make a painting. The first is learning something and the second is making something.”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

Source: Quotes, 1960 - 1970, The Pratt lecture (1960), p. 113

Problem , Learning

“I am not interested in the kind of expression that you have when you paint a painting with brush strokes. It's all right, but it's already done and I want to do something new. I didn't want to get into something which is played out and narrow. I want to do as I like, invent my own interests. Of course, that doesn't mean that people who, like Newman, still paint are worn out. But I think that's a particular kind of experience involving a certain immediacy between you and the canvass, you and the particular kind of experience of that particular moment. I think what I'm trying to deal with is something more long range than that in a way, more obscure perhaps, more involved with things that happen over a longer time perhaps. At least it's another area of experience.”

Donald Judd (1928–1994) artist

Quoted in: Donald Jud http://www.theartstory.org/artist-judd-donald.htm at theartstory.org, 2014
1960s, "Oral history interview with Donald Judd," 1965

People , Way , Thinking , Time

“The Watchman falls "into" the trap of looking. The "spy" is a different person.... The spy must be ready to "move", must be aware of his entrances and exits. The watchman leaves his job & takes away no information. The spy must remember & must remember himself & his remembering. The spy designs himself to be overlooked. The watchman "serves" as a warning. Will the spy & the watchman ever meet? In a painting named SPY, will he be present? The spy stations himself to observe the watchman. If the spy is a foreign object, why is the eye not irritated? Is he invisible? When the spy irritates, we try to remove him. "Not spying, just looking"”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

Watchman. Somewhere here, there is the question of "seeing clearly". Seeing what? According to what?
Book A (sketchbook), c 1965: as quoted in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 60
1960s

Question , Personality

“For many years, and like many British people, I had little feeling for the most expressive and roughest form of early twentieth century European painting, the expressionism of German artists around the First World War like Kirchner.”

Nicholas Serota (1946) British curator

The Dimbleby Lecture 2000

War , People , World , Feeling

“It is a question of the systematic and interpretive organization of the sensational, scattered and narcissist surrealist experimental material, - that is to say, of everyday surrealist events:, br>nocturnal pollution, false recollection, dream, diurnal fantasy, the concrete transformation of nocturnal phosphene into a hypnagogic image or of "waking phosphene" into an objective image, - the nutritive caprice, - inter-uterine claims, - anamorphic hysteria, - the voluntary retention of the urine, - the involuntary retention of insomnia - the fortuitous image of exclusively exhibitionist tendency, -the incomplete action, - the frantic manner, - the regional sneeze, the anal wheelbarrow, the minimal mistake, the liliputian malaise, the super-normal physiological state, - the picture one leaves off painting, that which one paints, the territorial ringing of the telephone, "the deranging image", etc., etc.,
all these things, I say, and a thousand other instantaneous or successive sollicitations, revealing a minimum of irrational intentionalety or, on the contrary, a minimum of suspect phenomenal nullity, are associated, by the mechanisms of paranoiac-critical activity, in an indestructible delirious-interpretive system of political problems, paralytic images, more or less mammiferous questions, playing the role of the obsessing idea.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Source: Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1931 - 1940, My Pictorial Struggle', S. Dali, 1935, Chapter: 'My Pictorial Struggle', pp. 15-16

Dreams , Idea , Question , Problem

“What should be most significant to us are not physical artifacts, but the meaning they embody. …whenever we create paintings, songs, poems, books, computer programs—or ideas in the minds of children—we do something of this sort.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

Children , Books , Idea

“There is a world of visual beauty open to the one willing to undergo the practice and striving necessary to the understanding of its language.
This world is a important as culturally as is the world of words or of music. My ideal is to form and to paint as Schubert sings his songs and as Beethoven creates his world in sounds. That is to say, creation of one’s own inner world through the same human and artistic discipline.
An inner sensation can find external expression only through spiritual realization.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Painting and Culture' p. 58
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

World , Beauty , Music , Understanding

“Today it's possible to paint one canvas with the calmness of an ancient Greek and the next with the anxiety of a Van Gogh. Either of these emotions, and any in between, is valid to me... I work on many canvasses at once. In the morning I line them up against the wall of my studio. Some speak, some do not. They are my mirrors. They tell me what I am like at that moment.”

William Baziotes (1912–1963) American painter

I Cannot Evolve Any Concrete Theory, William Baziotes, in Possibilities, Vol. I, no. 1, New York, winter 1947-48, p. 2
1940s

“I don't know what to write Feneon about the theory of 'passages'. I will write him what seems to me to be the truth of the matter, that I am at this moment looking for some substitute for the dot [which was the 'heart of [w:Neo-Impressionism|Neo-Impressionist]] painting]; so far I have not found what I want, the actual execution does not seem to me to be rapid enough and does not follow sensation with enough inevitability, but it would be best not to speak of this. The fact is I would be hard put to express my meaning clearly, although I am completely aware of what I lack.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote of Camille Pissarro, in a letter, Paris, 20 February 1889, to his son Lucien; in Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; transl. Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 134-135
Rewald: 'This data was doubtless for an article in preparation. While the question of the 'passage', which was going to separate Camille Pissarro from pointillism and thus from Divisionism, was then the main preoccupation of the artist, Pissarro was still unable to express himself with precision on it.'
1880's

Truth , Heart

“Well I spend my days reading, painting, thinking and meeting friends. It’s very pleasant. I’m studying Hindu thought, I’m studying Hindi poetry, my language is Hindi. I get up at 8am…there’s no fixed routine…after 10 or 11 o’ clock my friends come and see me. A message has to be conveyed. It’s not only a question of doing research, what has to be done has to be conveyed to people so it’s interesting to see people who are interested in coming and finding out what I’ve been doing all these years.”

S. H. Raza (1922–2016) Indian artist

Culture:S.H. Raza Comes in Full Circle

People , Question , Thinking , Study

“It happens that all those who have something of mine, painting, mobile, or static statue, say that it makes them very happy. For example, children adore mobile statues and understand their meaning immediately. I have seen children, here in France, in America or in Great Britain, run and shout with joy in my exhibitions. They like it instinctively.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

Calder, quoted in Calder: Gravity and Grace, eds. Giménez, Carmen, and Alexander S.C. Rower; Phaidon Press, New York 2004, p. 54
1950s - 1960s

Children , Understanding , Joy , Happiness

“Art, if it is successful in the task of questioning reality, if it is good painting and not merely a performance of dexterity, will be an affirmation of God.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

Italian Report (1955).
Italian Report (1955)

God , Art , Question , Reality

“That we may know
Whether the devil doth his looks belie,
And if he is as ugly as we paint him.”

Francesco Berni (1497–1535) Italian poet

LII, 1
Rifacimento of Orlando Innamorato

“Papa painted small landscapes by the river in Coyoacán, and copied sentimental paintings in watercolour and oil. Afterwards, he gave me a little box of paints that belonged to him. Ángel Salas gave me a small book that told me how to prepare the canvases, and I made them smooth, smooth. The courtship with Gómez Arias lasted from 1922 until 1925, when the bus crushed us both. Gómez Arias brought me books on painting and painters from Europe. These were the first books on art that fell into my hands.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

1950
Source: 1946 - 1953, "Song of herself"; interviews by Olga Campos, Sept. 1950, Chapter 'My Painting', p. 73

Books , Art , Box

“…when objects shattered into fragments appeared in my painting about 1909; this for me was a way of getting closest to the object... Fragmentation helped me to establish space and movement in space.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Source: posthumous quotes, Braque', (1968), p. 55

Way , Appearance , Help

“Don't lose sight of the essential objectives of painting, which are expression, emotion, delectation; to understand the means, to paint decoratively, to exalt form and color.”

Maurice Denis (1870–1943) French painter

Quote from Denis' Journal, 1930; as cited on Wikipedia: Maurice Denis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Denis - reference [43]
1921 and later

Color , Understanding

“Lueg and Palermo saw what was good, what was bad, in what I was painting. That became the basis of our relationship, that we shared an idea, a sensibility. With Sigmar Polke, it was different. Our relationship was based on being outrageous. I have difficulties with his work. He [Polke] refuses all values and criteria, and for that reason I could never talk to him seriously. He refuses to accept any borders, any limits.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

after 2000, Gerhard Richter: An Artist Beyond Isms' (2002)

Idea

“Seeks painted trifles and fantastic toys,
And eagerly pursues imaginary joys.”

Mark Akenside (1721–1770) English poet and physician

The Virtuoso (1737), stanza x, lines 89–90

Joy

“I love painting the way one loves the body of a women.... if painting must have an intellectual and social background, it is only to enhance and make more rich an essentially warm, simple, radiant act, for which everyone has a need.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

Conversation with W.C. Seitz, in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983
after 1970

Love , Women , Way

“There's a track called 'Why' that I really like. It's in the rock style again and I'm very satisfied with the lyrics. I wrote it after looking at a painting which had lots of things going on at the same time. Another song I really like is called 'I Still Love', because it's a little bit harder than the other ones.”

Basshunter (1984) Swedish singer, record producer and DJ

DigitalSpy interview with Alex Fletcher (7 September 2009) http://www.digitalspy.com/music/interviews/a175727/basshunter/
Bass Generation

Love , Time

“The most perfect art was Greek art. Raphael is the greatest of all masters in painting'. Such were the doctrines of every art teacher only twenty or thirty years ago.”

Emil Nolde (1867–1956) German artist

1.
1900 - 1920, On Primitive Art – Emil Nolde, 1912

Art , Teachers , Perfection

“Miro came of age as an artist just at the time World War 1. ended. With the end of the war came the end of all the new pre-war art conceptions. A young painter could not start as a Cubist or a Futurist, and Dada was the only manifestation at the moment. Miro began by painting farm scenes from the countryside of Barcelona, his native land... A few years later he came to Paris [circa 1914] and found himself among the Dadaists who were, at that time, transmuting into Surrealism. In spite of this contact Miró kept aloof from any direct influence and showed a series of canvases in which form submitted to strong colouring expressed a new two-dimensional cosmogony, in no way related to abstraction.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Quote in: 'Appreciations of other artists': Joan Miro (painter, sculptor author) 1946, by Marcel Duchamp; as cited in Catalog, Collection of the Societé Anonyme, eds. Michel Sanouillet / Elmer Peterson, London 1975, pp. 143- 159
1921 - 1950

War , Age , World , Art

“The most incurably frustrated—and, therefore, the most vehement—among the permanent misfits are those with an unfulfilled craving for creative work. Both those who try to write, paint, compose, etcetera, and fail decisively, and those who after tasting the elation of creativeness feel a drying up of the creative flow within and know that never again will they produce aught worthwhile, are alike in the grip of a desperate passion. Neither fame nor power nor riches nor even monumental achievements in other fields can still their hunger. Even the wholehearted dedication to a holy cause does not always cure them. Their unappeased hunger persists, and they are likely to become the most violent extremists in the service of their holy cause.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

Section 37, Ch.6 Misfits
The True Believer (1951), Part Two: The Potential Converts

Hunger , Feeling , Decision , Passion

“There may come, or perhaps has come, a time when no further progress in truthful representation is possible. There are those who say that such a point has been reached, an attempt to substitute a more and more simplified and decorative calligraphy. This direction is sterile and without hope to those who wish to give painting a richer and more human meaning and a wider scope. No one can correctly forecast the direction that painting will take in the next few years, but to me at least there seems to be a revulsion against the invention of arbitrary and stylized design.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

1911 - 1940, Notes on Painting - Edward Hopper (1933)

Truth , Hope , Time

“I hope I will be able to paint as long as I live.”

Margrethe II of Denmark (1940) Queen of Denmark

Unsourced

Hope

“So, of course, the visions are painted in the colours of the rainbow, and the reality is sketched in duller tones of black and white and grey. But I ask you to accept one thing. Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right. I may have been wrong. That is your call. But believe one thing, if nothing else. I did what I thought was right for our country.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

" Full text of Tony Blair's resignation speech http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/the_blair_years/article1772414.ece", Times Online, 10 May 2007.
Announcing his impending resignation, Trimdon Labour Club, 10 May 2007.
2000s

Reality , Heart , Country

“[Venice is] somewhat disguised by the artists who usually paint Venice, who have disfigured it by turning it into a city heated by the brightest and hottest sun. On the contrary, Venice, like all luminous cities, has a grey hue, the atmosphere is mild and misty and the sky arrays itself with clouds, just like the sky of our Norman and Dutch regions.”

Eugène Boudin (1824–1898) French painter

Quote of Boudin's letter, from Venice, 1895; to art-dealer Durand-Ruel; as cited in 'Venice, The Grand Canal' 1895, by Anne-Marie Bergeret-Gourbin https://www.museothyssen.org/en/collection/artists/boudin-eugene/venice-grand-canal, Museo Thyssen
1880s - 1890s

Sun

“This period of blue monochrome was the product of my pursuit of the indefinable in painting which that master, Eugène Delacroix [Romantic French painter] was able to indicate even in his day.”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

In 1957; p. 33
before 1960, "Yves Klein, 1928 – 1962, Selected Writings"

“Inferior as a mechanical printing method for ordinary photographic purposes, the gum process may for a time at least be regarded as standing apart for pictorial purposes, because the large amount of personal control which must be exercised before it can be said to show distinct advantages over other methods implies that the controlling hand must be guided by an artist that is, a man of such large instinctive artistic taste that one can hardly conceive that he would be able to produce a better result by painting, and without the use of photography at all, were he to devote the same skill and endeavour to the employment of brush or pencil, instead of photographic appliances.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Printing methods and their bearing on pictorial photography, p. 73

Exercises , Time , Personality

“I was painting modern Paris while you were still painting Greek athletes..”

Edouard Manet (1832–1883) French painter

quote from The Impressionists at first hand, by Bernard Denvir; Thames and Hudson, London 1991, p. 78
remark to his friend Edgar Degas, (quoted by George Moore circa 1879). Later Degas reacted: 'That Manet, as soon as I started painting dancers, he did them.'
1876 - 1883

“Goya in gratitude to his friend Arrieta for the skill and great care with which he saved his [Goya's] life in his acute and dangerous illness, suffered at the end of 1819, at the age of seventy-tree years. He painted this in 1820.”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

inscription by Goya, 1820
Goya painted this long inscription in 1820, - in the tradition of the ex-votos in the churches - in the double-portrait, [of his friend, and of Goya himself as the patient], he made of his doctor Eugenio Garciá Arrieta who helped him in 1819 with a severe illness
1820s

Life , Age , Tree , Suffering

“Compared with Brancusi, Matisse, Miro, I'm a barbarian. If people would understand the barbaric force of my paintings, instead of always pointing out how well I understand Picasso. I'm a Viking who has read French literature.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

as cited by Grace Glueck, in 'Robert Motherwell, Master of Abstract, Dies', by Grace Glueck, 'New York Times, 18 July 1991 https://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/18/obituaries/robert-motherwell-master-of-abstract-dies.html
Undated

People , Literature , Understanding , Reading

“I am never in a hurry to reach details. First and above all I am interested in the large masses and the general character of a picture; when these are well established, then I try for subtleties of form and color. I rework the painting constantly and freely, and without any systematic method.”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875) French landscape painter and printmaker in etching

Quote from Corot's 'Notebooks', ca. 1850, as quoted in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, pp. 240-241
1850s

Color

“The same year [1835] I made my debut at the Exposition in Rotterdam with [his painting] "the St. Janskerk in ’s Hertogenbosch, the interior", which immediately found a merchant... The approval by this, [and] the renewed appreciation I got in Felix 38, now concerning a 'church with incident sunlight', together with my personal characteristic tendency to reproduce the impressions which church buildings gave me, led me gradually to choose and prefer this genre [church-interiors], [and to visit] Belgium in '37 and repeatedly to return there, attracted by the abundance of study [many churches], that this country offered me..”

Johannes Bosboom (1817–1891) Dutch painter

citaat van Johannes Bosboom, in orogineel Nederlands: In hetzelfde jaar [1835] had ik op de Expositie te Rotterdam gedebuteerd met 'de St. Janskerk te 's Hertogenbosch van binnen', die terstond een kooper vond.. .De bijval hiermee behaald, [en] de hernieuwde bekrooning in Felix 38) nu voor eene 'kerk met inVallend zonlicht', gevoegd bij mijn bijzondere neiging om de indrukken weer te geven, die kerkgebouwen op mij maakten, leidde er mij gaandeweg toe dit genre [schilderijen van kerk-interieurs] bij voorkeur te kiezen; [en om] in '37 in Belgie te gaan bezoeken en herhaaldelijk daar weer te keeren, aangetrokken door den overvloed van studie [veel kerken], dien dat land mij aanbood..
Source: 1880's, Een en ander betrekkelijk mijn loopbaan als schilder, p. 11

Study , Personality , Country

“To a large extent, the problems of poets are the problems of painters, and poets must often turn to the literature of painting for a discussion of their own problems.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Opus Posthumous (1955), Adagia

Literature , Problem

“Every day I make more progress in technique: understanding of color, the material and the line. [I] can even give better theoretical explanations. And moreover, gradually I live more and more connected with the matter of the profession. What I mean is that my thinking and feeling are more directly, more fundamentally connected with painting itself. No longer so much thinking and feeling get lost.”

Roger Raveel (1921–2013) painter

Steeds ga ik vooruit wat betreft tecniek: begrip van kleur, matérie, lijnen. Kan zelfs beter téoretisch uitleggingen geven. En wat meer is ik leef langs om meer méé met de materie van de stiel. Ik wil zeggen dat mijn denken en voelen directer, en wezenlijker in kontakt staat met schilderen. Er gaat niet meer zoveel denken en voelen verloren.
Quote of Raveel, in a letter to his friend Hugo Claus, from Machelen aan de Leie, 5 March 1950; as cited in Hugo Claus, Roger Raveel; Brieven 1947 – 1962, ed. Katrien Jacobs, Ludion; Gent Belgium, 2007 - ISBN 978-90-5544-665-0, p. 118 (translation: Fons Heijnsbroek)
1945 - 1960

Color , Feeling , Understanding , Thinking

“Watching the painter painting
And all the time, the light is changing
And he keeps painting
That bit there, it was an accident
But he's so pleased
It's the best mistake, he could make
And it's my favourite piece.
It's just great.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Aerial (2005), A Sky of Honey (Disc 2)

Light , Change , Time

“I believe that there are varying points of contact. You have to be able to see the whole thing first. All great paintings are sculptures – there's so much of the factualness about it that a great painting forces you into a visual, physical movement of yourself. That's what determines the way you experience a painting kinetically. You move closer, you sight down it, you till your head, you step back, you feel as though you are in it. That being in it is just as important as looking from a distance.”

Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) American artist

Kenneth Noland, p. 10
Conversation with Karen Wilkin' (1986-1988)

Way , Feeling

“in a letter to Constantijn Huygens (Amsterdam, February 1636) on a Passion Cycle of 3 paintings, commissioned already in 1635 by the imperial court, as quoted in The Rembrandt Documents, Walter Strauss & Marjon van der Meulen - Abaris Books, New York 1979, p. 129”

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) Dutch 17th century painter and etcher

What Rembrandt is referring to in his phrase "I cannot refrain from presenting you, [dear] Sir, my latest work." is very probably one or more recent etchings, Rembrandt made.
1630 - 1640

Books , Quotes , Passion

“The next picture is a Goliath with four arms, reading a book, lofting a 1000-pound dumbbell, aiming a pistol at a target, painting a picture. The enemy can do everything. "He's a giant, seven feet tall with four arms, each with two biceps. Each arm can, of course, be used simultaneously."”

Herman Kahn (1922–1983) American futurist

pg: 11-12
The Worlds of Herman Kahn: the intuitive science of thermonuclear war.

Books , Reading

“If this end is unattainable, so, it can be said, is perfection in any other ideal of painting or in any other of man's activities.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

1911 - 1940, Notes on Painting - Edward Hopper (1933)

Perfection

“When I was young I was more obsessed with the materiality of things.... today I am more interested in air and atmosphere. This is why I deliberately treat space ambivalently. For example, an orange painting with white lines might be viewed as an orange wall with white lines, but the orange colour is no less atmospheric for all of that. It abounds white light, and the white line vibrate in a deep space, too, as well as an orange 'wall.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

Interview with Irmeline Lebeer, in 'Recent Work', Princeton Art Museum, 1973 pp. 10-13
after 1970

Light

“I was sorry for Gabriel that all the efforts you have employed so diligently were in vain to help him to sell one of his paintings in [the exposition in Amsterdam, in] 'Arti'. Is there not any chance to order from him a small presentable painting (backed up by me, if it will help) for one or the other? He really deserves it and hundred guilders can mean so much at some moments.”

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:) Het speet mij voor Gabriel alle door U zoo ijverig aangewende moeite te vergeefsch is geweest, om hem van een der schilderijen in 'Arti' [in Amsterdam] af te helpen. Zou er geen kans bestaan om voor hem eens een klein gesoigneerd (door mij, als het helpen kan, gerugsteund) schilderij te bestellen voor den een of ander? Hij verdient het zoo dubbel en een honderd guldens kunnen op sommige oogenblikken zoo véél doen.
Quote from Roelof's letter to Mr. P. verloren van Themaat , from Brussels, 4 Sept 1862; as cited in an excerpt in the R.K.D. Archive https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/291, The Hague
1860's

Effort , Chance , Help

“Painting is an eye, a blinded eye that continues to see, and sees what blinds it.... this tiny little thing, which is nothing, which dominates life.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

short quotes, 31 October 1966; p. 58
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

Life

“At first I did not feel much inclined to agree [ Willem Maris had asked Mauve to paint together in open air, around the village Oosterbeek, c. 1863 ], but I did not like to refuse the little fellow flatly, so we went off together. My companion did not suffer from loquacity; and, coming to a field with cows in it, I sat down to go on with a drawing which I had begun that morning. The little chap strolled around a bit and then settled down to work himself. We sat there for hours under the pollards, until I grew curious to see what the little fellow was at. He sat sketching with a bit of chalk; but, oh! I stood astounded. I seized him by the hand and stammered in my turn, 'My boy, what an artist you are! You stagger me! It's magnificent!”

Anton Mauve (1838–1888) Dutch painter (1838–1888)

Quote of Anton Mauve, c. 1863-65; as cited in Dutch Art in the Nineteenth Century – 'The Hague School; Introduction' https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dutch_Art_in_the_Nineteenth_Century/The_Hague_School:_Introduction, by G. Hermine Marius, transl. A. Teixera de Mattos; publish: The la More Press, London, 1908
1860's

Feeling , Boy , Suffering , Drawing

“You wouldn't believe the number of people who hang the electric chair painting in the homes, especially if the colour of the canvas matches the curtains.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

As quoted in Marie Deparis (2009), "Mounir Fatmi: Gardons Espoir / Keeping Faith" (bilingual exhibition notice, as a retranslation from the French "On n'imagine pas le nombre de personnes qui accrocheraient chez elles le tableau de la chaise électrique, surtout si les coloris de la toile s'harmonisent avec les rideaux.")
1968 - 1974, Electric chair quote

People , Home

“Painting has nothing to do with thinking, because in painting thinking is painting. Thinking is language – record-keeping – and has to take place before and after. Einstein did not think when he was calculating: he calculated – producing the next equation in reaction to the one that went before – just as in painting one form is a response to another and so on.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

undated quotes, The Daily Practice of Painting, Writings (1962-1993)

Thinking

“I feel an inner relationship which leads from the antique tot the Gothic, especially from the early ancient art, and from the Gothic to my own feeling for form. A great simplicity of form is something marvelous. As far back as I can remember, I have tried to put the simplicity of nature into the heads that I was painting or drawing. Now I have a real sense of being able to learn from the heads of ancient sculpture..”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

excerpt of her Journal, 1899; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 198
1899

Art , Feeling , Nature , Sense

“What is a portrait good for, unless it shows just how the subject was seen by the painter? In the old days before photography came in a sitter had a perfect right to say to the artist: "Paint me just as I am." Now if he wishes absolute fidelity he can go to the photographer and get it.”

Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898) English illustrator and author

As quoted in Aubrey Beardsley : A Biography (1999) by Matthew Sturgis, p. 189

Perfection

“Hereby I send you back the 'Winter' [a painting]. I hope you will be better satisfied now. After alternately smashing away and adding on the cart some new figures, finally this one climbed up, which I hope will do better than its predecessors..”

Anton Mauve (1838–1888) Dutch painter (1838–1888)

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Anton Mauve, in het Nederlands:) Hierbij zend ik je den winter [een schilderij] terug. Ik hoop dat je nu beter tevreden zult zijn. Na er eenige figuurtjes beurtelings op en van de wagen zijn gesmeten is er eindelijk deze opgeklommen die hoop ik beter zijn werk zal doen dan zijn voorganger..
Quote in a letter to Goupil in The Hague; as cited by R. Tervaert & C. Stolwijk, in ‘’De fabriek: Anton Mauve en zijn handelaren’’, 2009, p. 139
art-seller Goupil in The Hague wanted to buy this painting but demanded some additions first, to make it more marketable, it was too 'empty'
undated quotes

Hope , Winter

“.. it is a masterpiece [painting of Barend Cornelis Koekkoek: 'View on the Woods' 1839, with sizes 176 x 160 cm], a well-executed brave undertaking to imagine something like that on a large scale with such an elaborateness. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

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

(original Dutch: citaat van Willem Roelofs, in het Nederlands:) ..het is een meesterstuk [groot schilderij van : 'Boschgezicht' 1839, 176 x 160 cm], een welgelukte stoute onderneming om op die schaal met die uitvoerigheid zooiets voor te stellen.
In a letter to his parents, August 1840; as cited by Marjan van Heteren in Willem Roelofs 1822-1897 De Adem der natuur, ed. Marjan van Heteren & Robert-Jan te Rijdt; Thoth, Bussum, - ISBN13 * 978 90 6868 4322, 2006, p. 23
1840' + 1850's

Imagination

“What I always longed to do was to be able to paint like I can draw, most artists would tell you that, they would all like to paint like they can draw.”

David Hockney (1937) British artist

From a series of interviews with Marco Livingstone (April 22 - May 7, 1980 and July 6 - 7, 1980) quoted in Livingstone's David Hockney (1981), p. 207
1980s

Drawing

“As far as women are concerned, they seem always to have been more clean than the men, except when men painted them in colors which men liked best. Perhaps society was actually cleaner in the thirteenth century than in the sixteenth, as Saint Louis was more decent than Francis I, and as the bath was habitual in the twelfth century and exceptional in the renaissance.”

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

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Women , Men , Color

“By painting colours and lines and forms seen in a quickened mood I was seeking to make this mood vibrate as a phonograph does.”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

1896 - 1930
Source: Diary Saint Cloud, 1898; Munch, as quoted in Edvard Much – behind the scream, Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, p. 105

Mood

“Actually, one of the real problems that always bothers me [in creating a painting] is sustaining a feeling. I mean, when I look at Poussin now, well, I think that's the most incredible thing to maintain the feeling for a year, however long it took Poussin, I'm telling you, to paint this vast structure. Bur perhaps that is not given to us now. I don't know…. Actually all all modern art puzzles me. I don't understand it. II really don't. I don't know whether it is fragmentary [as David Sylvester the interviewer suggested]. I have a sickening nostalgia for this other state of sustaining a feeling for months, being able to construct and build a picture. Well Mondrian, I think, did that, of course. He was almost one of the last artists to do that. I wish I could get there.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

Source: 1950 - 1960, Interview with David Sylvester, BBC (March 1960), pp. 91-92

Art , Feeling , Understanding , Problem

“People frequently ask why my canvases are compartmentalized. No one ever asks this about a house. A man with a large family would not choose to live in a one-room house... I am like a man with a large family and must have many rooms. The children of my imagination occupy the various compartments of my painting, each independent and occupying its own place. At the same time they have the proper atmosphere in which to function together, in harmony and as a unified group. One can say that my paintings are like a house, in which each occupant has a room of his own.”

Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974) American artist

Arts and Architecture, vol. 68, no 9, September 1951, p. 21.
1950s

Children , People , Family , Imagination

“All anyone’s got is theories, usually distorted by what they’ve been through or what they want. This book, for example, was written by someone from a suburban, broken home, raised in Thatcher’s Britain, where inclusive ideas and family values were dismantled. A culture in which fame and celebrity became deified and drug use among the young extremely prevalent. Where modern manifestations of tribal identity like trade unions or guilds became redundant, manufacturing industries disappeared, neoliberalism emerged, and the welfare state was all but abolished. You could probably predict the contents of this book by looking at my weekly shopping receipt from Tesco’s. Alright, Waitrose. I’m dying to paint myself as a lowborn, Wat Tyler, Essex messiah; fortunately, I’m not quite that mad. I know that that heroic myth is part of my programming. That I’m quite a funny, normal bloke, that there’s a bit of bad in the best of us and a bit of good in the worst of us, that any centralized power structure with an egocentric figure at its helm will become corrupt.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Books , Family , Home , Idea

“There are ambiguities in the art of painting but they are the ambiguities of a fine precision: the discovered fact of the image containing at the same time the reverberations of the unknown, the truly mysterious… I would take this further and add that painting is itself precise in its ideas. In the sense that the image is the idea in its purist form.* [*“The image is a principal of our knowledge. It is that from which our intellectual activity begins, not as a passing stimulus but as an enduring foundation””

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

St. Thomas Aquinas, Opus XVI]
X magazine (1959-62)

Art , Idea , Knowledge , Sense

“If my painting depicts faithfully and without over-refinement the simple and true character of the place you have frequented, if I succeed.... in giving its own life to that world of vegetation, then you will hear the trees moaning under the winter wind, the birds that call their young and cry after their dispersion; you will feel the old chateau tremble; it will tell you that, as the wife you loved, it too will.... disappear and be reborn in multiple forms.. One does not copy with mathematical precision what one sees, but one feels and interprets a real world, all of whose fatalities hold you fast bound.”

Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867) French painter (1812-1867)

Quote in a letter to M. Guizot, c. 1839-41; as cited by Charles Sprague Smith, in Barbizon days, Millet-Corot-Rousseau-Barye publisher, A. Wessels Company, New York, July 1902, pp. 172-173
The Duke de Broglie had ordered of Rousseau a painting of the 'Chateau de Broglie', for his friend M. Guizot. Madame Guizot had died there, and The Duke de Broglie urged Rousseau to make the painting grave and sad.. The quote presents Rousseau’s responding
1830 - 1850

Love , Life , World , Feeling

“I love Brittany; I find wildness and primitiveness there. When my wooden shoes ring on this granite, I hear the muffled, dull, and powerful tone which I try to achieve in painting.”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

Source: 1870s - 1880s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), p. 109: in a letter to a friend, c. 1886

Love , Shoe

“The ladies of St. James’s!
They’re painted to the eyes;
Their white it stays forever
Their red it never dies:
But Phillida, my Phillida!
Her color comes and goes;
It trembles to a lily,—
It wavers to a rose.”

Henry Austin Dobson (1840–1921) English poet and essayist

At the Sign of the Lyre (1885).

Color

“Only those who have experienced the elation and despair which comes from the attempt to express their feelings about vision in oil paint will know that it is impossible to speak with complete impartiality about art.”

Roger Fry (1866–1934) English artist and art critic

Characteristics of French Art' 1931.
Art Quotes

Art , Feeling , Despair

“I think the ideas [as starting point for his paintings] are based upon very obvious physical facts – notions that are also simple-minded, such as, in the 'White Paintings', wanting to know if that was a thing to do or not, or in 'Factum', wondering about what the role of accident is. Those aren't really very involved ideas.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

1960's, I never thought of it as much of an ability,' (1968)

Idea , Thinking

“If upon a white canvas I jot down some sensations of blue, of green, of red – every new brush stroke diminishes the importance of the preceding ones. Suppose I set out to paint an interior... If I paint a green near the red, if I paint in a yellow floor, there must still be between this green, this yellow, and the white of the canvas a relation that will be satisfactory to me. But these several tones mutually weaken one another. It is necessary, therefore, that the various elements that I use be so balanced that they do not destroy one another..”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

Source: 1905 - 1910, Notes d'un Peintre' (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 411

“But with photography as with drawing or painting, once it is done I want to know whether it holds together or not. That is the real critique. I couldn’t care less if the person to whom I show what I do likes it or not — it takes all sorts to make a world and all that. To criticize is to put oneself in someone else’s shoes and try to figure out what they wanted to do. Only the “why” of things is important to me.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) French photographer

Source: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, We Always Talk Too Much: Conversation with Pierre Assouline (1994), p. 132

World , Shoe , Drawing , Personality

“I haven't really touched machinery except for a few elementary mechanisms like levers and balances. You see nature and then you try to emulate it. But, of course, when I met Mondrian [Paris, 1930] I went home and tried to paint [for a while]. The basis of everything for me is the universe. The simplest forms in the universe are the sphere and the circle. I represent them by disks and then I vary them. My whole theory about art is the disparity that exists between form, masses and movement. Even my triangles are spheres, but they are spheres of a different shape.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

Question, Which has influenced you more, nature or modern machinery?
1950s - 1960s, interview with Alexander Calder', (1962)

Art , Home , Nature , Universe

“Adieu, adieu, I am going to see up there [after death] whether friend Corot has found me any new subjects for landscape painting.”

Charles-François Daubigny (1817–1878) French painter

Quote, as recorded by Albert Wolff, 1880's, in Notes upon certain masters of the XIX century, - printed not published MDCCCLXXXVI (1886), The Art Age Press, 400 N.Y. (written after the exhibition 'Cent Chefs-d'Oeuvres: the Choice of the French Private Galleries', Petit, Paris / Baschet, New York, 1883, p. 74
Daubigny's final thought for art in 1878 was appearently strongly connected with Corot.
1860s - 1870s

Death

“Painting's not important. The important thing is keeping busy.”

Grandma Moses (1860–1961) American artist

As quoted in New Leaves (1986) by Louise Matteoni

Business

“How did I think up my drawings and my ideas for painting? Well I'd come home to my Paris studio in Rue Blomet at night, I'd go to bed, and sometimes I hadn't any supper. I saw things, and I jotted them down in a notebook. I saw shapes on the ceiling..”

Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist

from: Miro, on English Wikipedia
Miró's quote on 'automatic painting and drawing', explaining the start of his work 'Harlequin's Carnival' he made in Paris, strongly admired then by Surrealists like André Breton
1915 - 1940

Home , Idea , Thinking , Drawing

“We believe that we can find the end, and that a painting can be finished. The Abstract Expressionists always felt the painting's being finished was very problematical. We'd more readily say that our paintings were finished and say, well, it's either a failure or it's not, instead of saying, well, maybe it's not really finished.”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

Quote from an interview, 1966; as quoted in Minimal Art, a Critical Anthology, ed. Gregory Battcock, University of California Press, Berkeley 1968, p. 157-161
Quotes, 1960 - 1970

Failure

Quotes about painting page 12

Quotes about painting
page 12