Quotes about painting (2699 quotes, page 16)

“A great portrait is always more a portrait of the painter than of the painted.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Portraits
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books

“Once, along with The Transfigured Night, he played a class Rachmaninoff’s Isle of the Dead. Most of the class had not seen the painting, so he went to the library and returned with a reproduction of it. Then he pointed, with a sober smile, to a painting which hung on the wall of the classroom (A Representation of Several Areas, Some of Them Grey, one might have called it; yet this would have been unjust to it—it was non-representational) and played for the class, on the piano, a composition which he said was an interpretation of the painting: he played very slowly and very calmly, with his elbows, so that it sounded like blocks falling downstairs, but in slow motion. But half his class took this as seriously as they took everything else, and asked him for weeks afterward about prepared pianos, tone-clusters, and the compositions of John Cage and Henry Cowell; one girl finally brought him a lovely silk-screen reproduction of a painting by Jackson Pollock, and was just opening her mouth to—
He interrupted, bewilderingly, by asking the Lord what land He had brought him into. The girl stared at him open-mouthed, and he at once said apologetically that he was only quoting Mahler, who had also diedt from America; then he gave her such a winning smile that she said to her roommate that night, forgivingly: “He really is a nice old guy. You never would know he’s famous.””

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

“Is he really famous?” her roommate asked. “I never heard of him before I got here. ...”
Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 4, pp. 138–139

Love , Smile , Guy , Quotes

“The big artist does not sit down monkey like & copy a coal scuttle or an ugly old woman like some Dutch painters have done nor a dungpile, but he keeps a sharp eye on Nature & steals her tools. He learns what she does with light the big tool & then colour then form and appropriates them to his own use. Then he's got a canoe of his own smaller than Nature's but big enough for every purpose except to paint the midday sun which is not beautiful at all. It is plenty strong enough though to make midday sunlight or the setting sun if you know how to handle it. With this canoe he can sail parallel to Nature's sailing. He will soon be sailing only where he wants to selecting nice little coves & shady shores or storms to his own liking, but if ever he thinks he can sail another fashion from Nature or make a better shaped boat he'll capsize or stick in the mud & nobody will buy his pictures or sail with him in his old tub.”

Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) American painter

Letter to Benjamin Eakins (1868-03-03).

Beauty , Fashion , Nature , Thinking

“And now something strange happened to our Charlotte. While busy painting, as she always was, she fell asleep in the midday sun. And when she awoke, the finished portrait of her once so ardently beloved Daberlohn [ = Alfred Wolfsohn ] lay before her. However, she tore the sheet into a hundred thousand shreds.... she sought for an explanation... Then her glace fell on one of her old paintings representing Death and the Maiden. And suddenly she knew…”

Charlotte Salomon (1917–1943) German painter

Charlotte's 4th ending, written page in brush, related to no. 4923v https://charlotte.jck.nl/detail/M004923/part/character/theme/keyword/M004923JHM: (555) 'Life? or Theater..', p. 820
Charlotte Salomon - Life? or Theater?

Death , Business , Sun

“Painting is silent poetry, and poetry painting that speaks.”

Simonides of Ceos (-556–-468 BC) Ancient Greek musician and poet

Quoted by Plutarch, De gloria Atheniensium 3.346f http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0234%3Astephpage%3D346f.
Variant translations:
Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting with the gift of speech.
Painting is silent poetry, poetry is eloquent painting.
See also: Ut pictura poesis

“In addition to vision-level BHAGs [shorthand for Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals], an envisioned future needs what we call vivid description – that is, a vibrant, engaging, and specific description of what it will be like to achieve the BHAG. Think of it as translating the vision from words into pictures, of creating an image that people can carry around in their heads. It is a question of painting a picture with your words. Picture painting is essential for making the 10-to-30- year BHAG tangible in people’s minds.”

Jerry I. Porras (1938) American writer

Source: "Building your company's vision," 1996, p. 74

People , Question , Thinking , Future

“I don't feel any direct relationship between what I do and existing art. Though there is unavoidable progression: the things all paintings have in common are paint, and color, and some means of application. With the standard you can make any two pictures appear either alike of different. I don't think whether they're alike or different is really very interesting.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

1950's, Is today's artist with or against the past, (1958)

Art , Color , Feeling , Thinking

“I have read your pleasant letter of 14th with singular pleasure. I discern your kind inclination and affection which I feel deeply obliged to requite [you] with service and friendship. Because of [my] inclination to do this, [and] in spite of your wish (of Constantijn Huygens], [I] am sending [you] along [with this letter] a painting, hoping that you will accept it, because it is the first momento which I offer you, Sir.... postscripttum]: My [dear] Sir: hang this picture in a bright light and in such a manner that it can be viewed from a distance. It will then sparkle at its best.”

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

1630 - 1640

Friendship , Pleasure , Hope , Feeling

“It is essential to bear in mind that the world of the mystics, like that of modern physics, cannot always be 'explained' in normal words, but often 'shows' itself the better through visual images.. [from the accumulation of matter and of objects to the radicalism of a gesture, it is a matter of] painting the essential and nothing more”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

Tàpies is citing here Llull
in his 1990 speech 'L'art modern, la mística i l'humor' ('Modern Art, Mysticism and Humour'), Barcelona: Editorial Empúries i Fundació Antoni Tàpies, 1993; as quoted in: 'Tàpies: From Within', June ─ November, 2013 - Presse Release, Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC), p. 12
insisting on his 'magma works' like 'Montseny-Montnegre' and 'Díptic amb dues formes corbes' (Diptych with Two Curved Shapes), 1988.
1981 - 1990

World

“Even the last scintillating assembly of the leaders of the Reich could scarcely distract me from my cares. That was the gala celebration of Goering's birthday on January 12, 1944, which he held at Karinhall. We all came with expensive presents, such as Goering expected: cigars from Holland, gold bars from the Balkans, valuable paintings and sculptures. Goering had let me know that he would like to have a marble bust of Hitler, more than life size, by Breker. The overladen gift table had been set up in the big library. Goering displayed it to his guests and spread out on it the building plans his architect had prepared for his birthday. Goering's palace-like residence was to be more than doubled in size. At the magnificently set table in the luxurious dining room flunkies in white livery served a somewhat austere meal, in keeping with the conditions of the time. Funk, as he did every year, delivered the birthday speech at the banquet. He lauded Goering's abilities, qualities, and dignities and offered the toast to him as "one of the greatest Germans."”

Albert Speer (1905–1981) German architect, Minister of Armaments and War Production for Nazi Germany

Funk's extravagant words contrasted grotesquely with the actual situation. The whole thing was a ghostly celebration taking place against a background of collapse and ruin.
Source: Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs (1970), p. 322

Life , Birthday , Time

“I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Screwtape Letters

Preface
The Screwtape Letters (1942)

Love , Men , Age , World

“What motive had a Dutch painter in painting a picture? None. And notice that he never asked for one. A peasant with a drunken red nose looks at you with his heavy eye and laughs with open mouth showing his teeth, raising a jug; if it is well painted, it has its value.”

Eugène Fromentin (1820–1876) French painter

Quote from Les Maitres d'Autrefois / The Old Masters, 1876; 1948, p. 115; as cited in 'Dutch Painting of the Golden Age', http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/dutch-painting-the-golden-age/content-section-2 OpenLearn

Motivation

“If all the wisdom of the world and all its art—all the spoils that it has won from nature, all the fire that it has snatched from heaven—were gathered together and divided into heaps, and we could point and say, for instance, these mighty truths were flashed forth in the brilliant salon amid the ripple of light laughter and the sparkle of bright eyes; and this deep knowledge was dug up in the quiet study, where the bust of Pallas looks serenely down on the leather-scented shelves; and this heap belongs to the crowded street; and that to the daisied field—the heap that would tower up high above the rest as a mountain above hills would be the one at which we should look up and say: this noblest pile of all—these glorious paintings and this wondrous music, these trumpet words, these solemn thoughts, these daring deeds, they were forged and fashioned amid misery and pain in the sordid squalor of the city garret. There, from their eyries, while the world heaved and throbbed below, the kings of men sent forth their eagle thoughts to wing their flight through the ages. There, where the sunlight streaming through the broken panes fell on rotting boards and crumbling walls; there, from their lofty thrones, those rag-clothed Joves have hurled their thunderbolts and shaken, before now, the earth to its foundations.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Wisdom , Men , Pain , Truth

“I spent the winter [1859-1860, when he was painting 'Orfée et Euridice'] in the Elysian fields, where I was very happy; you must admit that if painting is a folly, it’s a sweet folly that men should not only forgive but seek out.”

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

Corot told Dumensnil in 1875; as quoted in Corot, Gary Tinterow, Michael Pantazzi, Vincent Pomarède - Galeries nationales du Grand Palais (France), National Gallery of Canada, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.), 1996, p. 290 – note 18
1870s

Men , Forgiveness , Winter , Happiness

“If you add something to a painting, never let it be for aesthetic reasons. Only let it be for reasons of expression.”

Asger Jorn (1914–1973) Danish artist

Statement to his friend Pierre Alechinsky, between 1965-1970; as quoted in Asger Jorn (2002) by Arken Museum of Modern Art, p. 115
1959 - 1973, Various sources

“The Beauty which old Greece or Rome
Sung, painted, wrought, lies close at home.”

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892) American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery

To ———, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Beauty , Home

“In addition, 'Elementarism' is real instead of abstract. The use of the term 'abstract' also caused much misunderstanding. This is easily explained... As used in connection with visual methods of expression, the term 'abstract' is extremely relative. 'To abstract' something implies one of those mental activities (in contrast to emotional spontaneity) through which certain [aesthetic] values are isolated from the world of reality. However, when such values were realized visually and applied as purely constructive means, they became real. Thus the abstract was transformed into the real, thereby illustrating the relativity of the former term. Hence, the term ‘abstract-real’ [proposed by his former artist-fellow Piet Mondrian, ] was a fortunate invention, although in reference to a new orientation [van Doesburg's new art orientation 'Elementarism'] the term 'real' is sufficient. The period of abstraction is at an end. Is not an elementary painting, which is to say a certain composition of plane-linear colours, organic in itself, more concrete…”

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

Quote from Van Doesburg's article 'Elementarism as real art', in: 'Painting and plastic art' - Rome, July 1926, in De Stijl', series XIII, 1 75-6, 1926, pp. 35–43
1926 – 1931

World , Art , Reality

“Light and air, that's art! I can never give enough light in my paintings, especially in the skies. The air in a painting, that is really a thing! It is the main thing! Air and light are the great magicians. It is the sky which prescribes the painting. Painters never look enough at the sky. We must get it from above. (translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch (1824–1903) Dutch painter of the Hague School (1824-1903)

version in original Dutch / citaat van J. H. Weissenbruch, in het Nederlands: Licht en lucht, dat is de kunst! Ik kan in m'n schilderijen, vooral in de luchten, nooit licht genoeg brengen.. .De lucht op een schilderij, dat is een ding! Een hoofdzaak! Lucht en licht zijn de groote toovenaars. De lucht bepaalt het schilderij. Schilders kunnen nooit genoeg naar de lucht kijken. Wij moeten het van boven hebben.
Quote of J. H. Weissenbruch; as cited in J.H. Weissenbruch 1824-1903, ed. E. Jacobs, H. Janssen & M. van Heteren; exposition-catalog, Museum Jan Cunen / Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Zwolle 1999, pp. 227-233

Art , Light

“If until now colour and form were used as inner agents, it was mainly done subconsciously. The subordination of composition to geometrical form is no new idea (cf. the art of the Persians). Construction on a purely spiritual basis is a slow business, and at first seemingly blind and unmethodical. The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul, so that it can weigh colours in its own scale and thus become a determinant in artistic creation. If we begin at once to break the bonds that bind us to nature and to devote ourselves purely to combination of pure colour and independent form, we shall produce works that are mere geometric decoration, resembling something like a necktie or a carpet. Beauty of form and colour is no sufficient aim by itself, despite the assertions of pure aesthetes or even of naturalists obsessed with the idea of "beauty". It is because our painting is still at an elementary stage that we are so little able to be moved by wholly autonomous colour and form composition. The nerve vibrations are there (as we feel when confronted by applied art), but they get no farther than the nerves because the corresponding vibrations of the spirit which they call forth are weak. When we remember however, that spiritual experience is quickening, that positive science, the firmest basis of human thought is tottering, that dissolution of matter is imminent, we have reason to hope that the hour of pure composition is not far away. The first stage has arrived.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote from Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Wassily Kandinsky, Munich, 1912; as cited in Kandinsky, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 15
1910 - 1915

Beauty , Hope , Art , Feeling

“You tell the big lie by carefully selecting only the small, isolated truths, linking them in such a way that that advance the bigger lie by painting a picture inside the viewer's head. The Ascended High Master of this Dark Art is Noam Chomsky.”

Bill Whittle (1959) author, director, screenwriter, editor

MAGIC https://web.archive.org/web/20030602124318/http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000051.html (18 May 2003)
2000s

Truth , Lie , Art , Way

“My art in the last period has all been in small format, but my paintings have become even deeper and more spiritual, speaking purely through colour... And now I leave these small – but to me – important works to the future and to the people who love art.”

Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941) Russian painter

from: 'Lebenserinnerungen', 1938 - after 1937 Jawlensky couldn't paint any longer because of severe arthritis
Source: 1936 - 1941, Life Memories' (1938), p. 249

Love , People , Art , Future

“I have made the complete return [from imagination] to nature, and nature is, as we all know, primarily an intellectual idea. I am satisfied that painting also is like nature, an intellectual idea, and that the laws of nature as presented to the mind through the eye and the eye is the painter's first and last vehicle are the means of transport to the real mode of thought: the only legitimate source of aesthetic experience for the intelligent painter.”

Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) American artist

n.p.
1921 - 1930, Art and the Personal Life', Marsden Hartley, 1928

Law , Imagination , Intelligence , Idea

“I don't pretend to be a gentleman, but I am entitled to paint what I see”

L. S. Lowry (1887–1976) British visual artist

Interview tapes with G B Cotton & Frank Mullineux (undated)L. S. Lowry - A Biography by Shelley Rhode Lowry Press 1999 ISBN 9781902970011.
Interview tapes Cotton & Mullineux

“The hardest part of doing anything creatively is just getting up and doing. Once I get out of bed and get into my art room, I start painting. I'm there. And I'm doing it.”

Frances Bean Cobain (1992) American artist

" Frances Bean Cobain on Life After Kurt's Death: An Exclusive Q&A http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/frances-bean-life-after-kurt-cobain-death-exclusive-interview-20150408" (2015)

Art , Parting

“When less than four years old I was standing with my nurse, Mary Ward, watching the shadows on the wall from branches of an elm behind which the moon had risen. I have never forgot those shadows and am often trying to paint them.”

Samuel Palmer (1805–1881) British landscape painter, etcher and printmaker

The Life and Letters of Samuel Palmer, Painter and Etcher (AH Palmer, London, 1892)

“A picture that I painted after the defeat of the Republicans in Spain [in 1936, Max Ernst was a resolute opponent of the Spanish dictator General Franco, who was supported by Germany's Nazi regime] is 'The Fireside Angel'. This is, of course, an ironic title for a rampaging beast that destroys and annihilates anything that gets in its way. This was my idea at the time of what would probably happen in the world, and I was right.”

Max Ernst (1891–1976) German painter, sculptor and graphic artist

Quote in 'Room 10, Max Ernst', the exhibition text of FONDATION BEYELER 2 - MAX ERNST, 2013, texts: Raphaël Bouvier & Ioana Jimborean; ed. Valentina Locatelli; transl. Karen Williams
Max Ernst is referring to his painting 'L'ange du foyer' / 'Le triomphe du surréalisme', 1937 ('The Fireside Angel' / The Triumph of Surrealism'); the alternative title was offered by Ernst himself in 1938, when he spontaneously opted for a different title: 'The Triumph of Surrealism'.
1936 - 1950

World , Angels , Way , Idea

“I have tried to draw the human effigy (and all the other subjects dealt with in my paintings) in an immediate and effective way without any reference to the aesthetic.”

Jean Dubuffet book Prospectus et tous écrits suivants

Source: 1960-70's, Prospectus et tous écrits suivants, 1967, p. 430

Way , Drawing

“Now men and their... um... equipment can sometimes falter under pressure so imagine the stress that artist Pricasso and his 'man thing' brush were under, when he came on stage to paint the one and only Carlotta.”

Pricasso (1949) Australian painter

[Gold Coast Bulletin staff, Gold Coast Bulletin, Queensland, Australia, News Limited, Fundraiser has a brush with 'talent', 7 March 2012, 24]
About

Men , Imagination

“After viewing a few paintings and a drawing that I had brought in the day before yesterday, Mr. v. d. Kellen [Dutch art-dealer] assured me that there was absolutely no chance of placing anything of mine here, unless it was bought under pressure of a pleasant future, and I think he is right because he showed me various paintings, and specifically those that were closest to my understanding of art were the most difficult to place... I was astounded and furious about such far-reaching stupidity and the pedantry of the man [another art dealer, Herman Deichmann]. All the paintings present were beneath criticism, they were just the usual German Academic-stuff.”

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

The Hague, 1882
version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) De heer v.d. Kellen heeft mij na het zien van eenige schilderijtjes en een tekening, die ik eergisteren mee gebracht had, de verzekering gegeven dat er niet de minste kans bestaat hier iets van mij te plaatsen, tenzij dat het gekocht wordt door pressie een prettig vooruitzicht en ik geloof dat hij gelijk heeft want hij liet mij verschillende schilderijen zien en juist degenen die naar mijn begrippen de kunst 't meest nabij kwamen waren 't moeilijkst te plaatsen.. .Ben verbaasd en woedend geweest over de verregaande stupiditeit en pedanterie van dien heer (kunsthandelaar, Herman Deichmann). Alle schilderijen daar aanwezig waren beneden kritiek, waren enfin 't gewone duitsche Academietuig. (Den Haag, 1882)
Quote from Breitner's letter to A.P. van Stolk, undated c. Sept. 1882, (location: The RKD in The Hague); as quoted by Helewise Berger in Van Gogh and Breitner in The Hague, her master-essay in Dutch - Modern Art Faculty of Philosophy University, Utrecht, Febr. 2008]], (translation from the original Dutch, Anne Porcelijn) p. 69.
Following the advice of his maecenas Mr.van Stolk, Breitner had shown his work to two Dutch art-dealers; In this quote he later gives his report and his opinion.
before 1890

Stupidity , Art , Understanding , Thinking

“Each painting is linked to a fundamental drama.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“It is curious that money, which is the most valuable thing in life, exceptis excipiendis, should be the most fatal corrupter of music, literature, painting and all the arts. As soon as any art is pursued with a view to money, then farewell, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, all hope of genuine good work.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Money
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XI - Cash and Credit

Life , Money , Hope , Art

“First contact with occult, magical and enchanting forces. One of his best friends, a very intelligent and affectionate pink cockatoo, died in the night of 5 January. It was a terrible shock for Max when he found the dead bird in the morning, at the same moment as his father told him of the birth of his sister, Loni. The boy's consternation was so great that he fainted. In his imagination, he linked the two events and made the baby responsible for extinguishing the bird's life. A series of psychological crises and depressions followed. A dangerous amalgamation of birds and human beings became firmly established in his mind and later found expression in his paintings and drawings.”

Max Ernst (1891–1976) German painter, sculptor and graphic artist

Quote in 'Tissue of Truth, Tissue of Lies', Max Ernst; as cited in 'Room 7, Max Ernst', the exhibition text of FONDATION BEYELER 2 - MAX ERNST, 2013, texts: Raphaël Bouvier & Ioana Jimborean; ed. Valentina Locatelli; transl. Karen Williams
Max Ernst is referring to a childhood experience in 1906, when Max Ernst was c. 15 years old
posthumous

Life , Imagination , Intelligence , Boy

“.. in an review of the exhibition in Arti, [in Amsterdam] you say that most of my submissions are not meant as a study. I don't know what you mean by study. I understand a study as a work I am painting directly after nature, with the aim hold on the casual tone, color and line. All of mine that is presented there, is immediately felt in nature and not one of the sketches is done by heart after received impressions for any paintings. I thought I had to tell you this, because then you might get a different view of it - whether you think they are more worthy or not because of this, I don't want to judge.... yours GH Breitner”

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

Mejufvrouw In een stukje over de Tent. in Arti zegt u dat het meerendeel van mijn inzending niet als studie bedoeld zijn. Ik weet niet wat u onder studie verstaat. Ik versta daar onder wat men direct naar de natuur schilderd om de toevallige toon kleur en lijn vast te houden. Na alles wat er van mij is. is dadelijk naar de natuur ervaren en zijn geen van allen [1:2] schetsen uit het hoofd gedaan na ontvangen indrukken voor eventuelen schilderijen. Ik meende u dat te moeten zeggen omdat u er dan misschien een anderen kijk op krijgt of u vind dat ze daarom verdienstelijker zijn of niet wil ik niet beoordeelen.. ..Hoogachtend uw GH Breitner
quote of Breitner in a letter to art-critic Grada Hermina Marius, 22 Feb. 1908; original text in RKD-Archive, The Hague https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/951
1900 - 1923

Color , Understanding , Nature , Thinking

“It gives my brain a rest, painting flowers. I don't feel the same tension as when I have a model in front of me. When I paint flowers, I put on colours and try out values boldly, without worrying about wasting a canvas. I wouldn't dare to do it with a figure; I'd be afraid of spoiling the whole thing. And the experience I gain this way is then applied to my pictures.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

Source: undated quotes, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, p. 196 : quote on painting flowers, to art-buyer George Riviere, who was watching a flower still-life of Renoir.

Way , Feeling , Flowers

“If, therefore, you've already considered that Signac and the others who are doing pointillism often make very beautiful things with it - Instead of running those things down, one [Bernhard] should respect them and speak of them sympathetically, especially when there's a falling out. Otherwise one becomes a narrow sectarian oneself, and the equivalent of those who think nothing of others and believe themselves to be the only righteous ones. This extends even to the academic painters, because take, for example, a painting by Fantin-Latour — and above all his entire oeuvre. Well then — there's someone who hasn't rebelled, and does that prevent him, that indefinable calm and righteousness that he has, from being one of the most independent characters in existence?”

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

Quote in Vincent's letter to Emile Bernard, from Paris, about December 1887; from letter 575 - vangoghletters http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let575/letter.html]
1880s, 1887

Beauty , Thinking

“I have had no formal training in painting: I gave up Art A level because I was sick of drawing peppers.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Portraits (2009)

Art , Drawing , Training

“And it's certain that unexpected new ideas are beginning to emerge. That paintings are once again beginning to be painted in very different tone from a few years ago.
The last thing I made is a rather large study of an avenue of poplars with the yellow autumn leaves, where the sun makes glittering patches here and there on the fallen leaves on the ground, which are interspersed with the long shadows cast by the trunks. At the end of the road a peasant cottage, and the blue sky above it between the autumn leaves.
I think that in a year's time — having spent that year once again painting a great deal and constantly — I'll change my manner of painting and my colour a great deal, and that I'm likely to become slightly more sombre rather than lighter.”

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

Quote from Vincent's letter to Theo van Gogh, from Nuenen, The Netherlands, on or about Saturday, 25 October 1884; from original text of letter 467 - vangoghletters online http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let467/letter.html
1880s, 1884

Idea , Autumn , Thinking , Study

“The new discovery that I have made in painting is the following. There are chords of colors, let's say a certain red and green, which move, shimmer when you look at them. Now if you're looking at a tree in a landscape, you can either look at the tree, or at the landscape, but not both, because of the stereoscopic effect. Now, when you are painting something three-dimensional, the chromatic sound which shimmers is the three-dimensional effect of colour, and when you paint a landscape, and the green foliage shimmers a little with the blue sky showing through it, that happens because the green is on a different plane from the sky in nature too. Finding the space-shaping energies of colour, instead of contenting ourselves with a dead chiaroascuro, is our finest task.”

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

in a letter to artist de:Hans Thuar, 1913, from Lake Thun in Switzerland; as quoted by de:Wolf-Dieter Dube, in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 145

Color , Nature , Tree , Dead

“Say anything you want against The Seventh Seal. My fear of death — this infantile fixation of mine — was, at that moment, overwhelming. I felt myself in contact with death day and night, and my fear was tremendous. When I finished the picture, my fear went away. I have the feeling simply of having painted a canvas in an enormous hurry — with enormous pretension but without any arrogance. I said, 'Here is a painting; take it, please.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

Interview with Charles Thomas Samuels (1971).

Death , Fear , Feeling , Night

“In another's eyes I'm afraid that I can't see
This picture perfect portrait that they paint of me.
They don't realize and I pray they never do,
'Cause every time I look I'm seein' you
In another's eyes.”

Garth Brooks (1962) American country music artist

In Another's Eyes, written by Bobby Wood, John Peppard, and G. Brooks, duet with Trisha Yearwood.
Song lyrics, Sevens (1997)

Time , Perfection

“I see the possibilities of a new kind of painting. With free surfaces, the goal I was always steering towards.”

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

In a letter, 1923; as quoted in Expressionism, de:Wolf-Dieter Dube; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 52
1920's

“What I lack is the spiritual basis which under girded Romantic painting. We have lost the feeling of God's omnipresence in Nature. For us, everything is empty. Yet, these paintings [of a. o. Caspar David Friedrich ] are still there. They still speak to us. We continue to love them, to use them, to have need of them.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Source: after 2000, Doubt and belief in painting' (2003), p. 109, note 62

Love , God , Feeling , Nature

“I like working on sponge because it's a simple, light material and always ready to use. The colour and texture meet my aesthetic requirements and it has a lolof volume and physically, is very present in the space. The ink or paint is immediately absorbed into the foam surface, making any corrections almost impossible. It is a material which lends itself to quick, fast application and is particularly good for spontaneous sketching with paint squeezed directly from the tube. The fact that these works will not last (sponge is not a very durable material) does not deter me; it suits the character of the work very well and to an extent reflects my ideas about art.”

Tomasz Vetulani (1965) Polish artist

At the time of writing exhibition catalogue, the Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, 1998.

Art , Idea , Light

“It was no accident that I found my way to Götz at the time [c. 1960-62]. This 'Informal' element runs through every picture I've painted, whether it's a landscape, or a family painted from a photograph, or the Colour Charts or a Grey picture. And so now it is a pursuit of the same objectives by other means... As I now see it, all my paintings are 'Informal'.... except for the landscapes, perhaps... The 'Informal' is the opposite of the constructional quality of classicism – the age of kings, of clearly formed hierarchies.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Source: after 2000, Doubt and belief in painting' (2003), p. 42, note 45 : quote on his period of Informal art

Age , Family , Way , Time

“Put a lot of paint & a wooden ball or other object on a board. Push to the other end of the board. Use this in a painting.”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

ruler on board.
Book A (sketchbook), p 52, c 1964: as quoted in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 58
1960s

“When I got my first paycheck, $5'000 or something. I bought a Leger and I bought a Frida Kahlo self-portrait, but I don't know which came first. But I remember buying it and I had just gotten married and it looked completely out of place in my house in Malibu.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

(When asked what was the first painting she bought).
Aperture Magazine 1999 http://allaboutmadonna.com/madonna-interviews-articles/aperture-magazine-summer-1999

Housing

“I have just concluded my series of paintings, I look at them constantly. I who made them often find them horrible. I understand them only at rare moments, when I have forgotten all about them, on days when I feel kindly disposed and indulgent to their poor maker. Sometimes I am horribly afraid to turn round canvases which I have piled against the wall; I am constantly afraid of finding monsters where I believed there were precious gems!… Thus it does not astonish me that the critics in London relegate me to the lowest rank. Alas! I fear that they are only too justified! - However, at times I come across works of mine which are soundly done and really in my style, and at such moments I find great solace. But no more of that. Painting, art in general, enchants me. It is my life. What else matters?”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote in a letter, 20 Nov. 1883; as quoted in Painting Outside the lines, Patterns of Creativity in Modern Art, ed. David W. Galenson, Harvard University Press, 30 Jun 2009, p. 84
1880's

Life , Fear , Art , Feeling

“The lion is not so fierce as they paint him.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

“I believe Corot painted a tree better that any of us, but still I find him superior in his figures.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Degas in 1883, as quoted by Colin B. Bailey, in The Annenberg Collection: Masterpieces of Impressionism and Post-impressionism, publish. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2009, p. 4
note 5: 20 June 1887, - Corot’s biographer Alfred Robaut https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Robaut told this story (1905. Vol. 1. P. 336)
1876 - 1895

Tree

“When I have to think about it, I know the picture is wrong. And sizing is a form of thinking and coloring is too. My instinct about painting says, 'If you don’t think about it, it's right'. As soon as you have to decide and choose, it's wrong. And the more you decide about, the more wrong it gets. Some people, they paint abstract, so they sit there thinking about it because their thinking makes them feel they're doing something. But my thinking never makes me feel I'm doing anything.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), p. 149

People , Color , Feeling , Thinking

“Cubism taught me much and the principle of Pissarro, furthered by Seurat, taught me more. These with Cezanne are the great logicians of color.
No one will ever paint like Cezanne for example, because no one will ever have his peculiar visual gifts; or to put it less dogmatically, will anyone ever appear again with so peculiar and almost unbelievable a faculty for dividing color sensations and making logical realizations of them? Has anyone ever placed his color more reasonably with more of a sense of time and measure than he? I think not, and he furnished for the enthusiast of today new reasons for research into the realm of color for itself.”

Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) American artist

n.p.
1921 - 1930, Art and the Personal Life', Marsden Hartley, 1928

Color , Thinking , Sense , Appearance

“The idea of objectivity in the evaluation of pictures introduces the concept of rational and scientific assessment. There are some sciences involved in the making and in the study of pictures, but the art itself is finally not a science and will not submit to scientific regimentation because its life depends on the degree to which it is inhabited by mystery, speaks to us of the unknown. It is simply an avoidance of the interesting difficulty to subject the inexplicable to the process of rational explanation. For since the real pleasures of painting and the reality of its meaning exist in the part of its structure which cannot be explained, all suggestions and pretensions at explanation must lead us away from the area of greatest interest. This is to say that such analysis as purports to lay bare the machinery which makes a painting work — makes it a good painting — not only leaves out the most important factor, the element of mystery, but actively denies the reality which is the justification for the art at all.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

X magazine (1959-62)

Life , Pleasure , Art , Idea

“Alas, because I'm no longer innocent. We're civilized beings. Whether we like it or not, we have the cares and concerns of classical civilization in our bones. I want to express myself clearly when I paint. In people who feign ignorance there is a kind of barbarism even more detestable than the academic kind: it's no longer possible to be ignorant today. One no longer is. We come into the world armed with facility. Facility is the death of art and we must rid ourselves of it.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), p. 155, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif': Cited in: George Pattison. God and Being: An Enquiry, (2011). p. 64

Death , People , World , Art

“About 1883 a kind of break occurred in my work. I had wrung Impressionism dry, and had come to the conclusion that I knew neither how to paint nor how to draw. In a word, I was at an impasse”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

Benicka (1980) commented:
The frescoes of Raphael and the Pompeian murals that he saw there definitely confirmed what Renoir had begun to feel about his own art; that it was becoming too amorphous in character and was weak in design.
undated quotes
Source: ‎'‎'Renoir‎'‎', by A. Vollard, Paris, 1920, p. 135; as quoted in: Corinne Benicka (1980) Great modern masters. p. 130;

Drawing

“That is why, perhaps, all of us derive Pissarro. He had the good luck to be born in the West Indies, where he learned how to draw without a teacher. He told me all about it. In 1865 he was already cutting out black, bitumen, raw sienna and the ocher's. That's a fact. Never paint with anything but the three primary colours and their derivatives, he used to say me. Yes, he was the first Impressionist.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Camille Pissarro was Cézanne's 'teacher' in impressionistic landscape painting; they frequently painted together in open air.
Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), p. 164, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif'

Learning , Teachers , Drawing

“how do i get cowboy paint off a dog.”

Dril Twitter user

[ Link to tweet https://twitter.com/dril/status/2299229204]
Tweets by year, 2009

Dogs

“The theatre gives us representations of things, and there we see a sort of moving, speaking pictures but they are transient whereas painting remains and is always at hand.”

Jonathan Richardson (1667–1745) English painter

Essay on the Theory of Painting (1725)

“It all began with my painting a picture of an American flag. Using this design took care of a great deal for me because I didn't have to design it. So I want on to similar things like the targets things the mind already knows. That gave me room to work on other levels. For instance, I've always thought of a painting as a surface; painting it in one color made this very clear... A picture ought to be looked at the same way you look at a radiator.”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

His heart belong to DADA, Time 73, 4 May, 1959: 58; as quoted in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 82
1950s

Color , Way

“One must be of one's time and paint what one sees.”

Edouard Manet (1832–1883) French painter

As quoted in Encyclopedia of Artists (2000) by William Vaughan and Christopher Ackroyd, p. 28
1876 - 1883

Time

“I have to work things out by painting them. I can't just imagine what will happen. I have to do it and see it. That's the only way I find out if it will go anywhere.”

Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) American artist

Kenneth Noland, p. 9
Conversation with Karen Wilkin' (1986-1988)

Way , Imagination

“Mr. Lely, I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts, and everything as you see me, otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it.”

Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) English military and political leader

As quoted in Anecdotes of Painting in England (1762-1771) by Horace Walpole often credited as being the origin of the phrase "warts and all".
Variant: Paint me as I am. If you leave out the scars and wrinkles, I will not pay you a shilling.

“From our very first conversation in the Closerie des Lilas the day after the opening of the first exhibition of Futurist painting [in Paris, February 1912] I noticed that Fernand Léger was one of the most gifted and promising Cubists... Léger's article ('Les origins de la peinture et sa valeur representative', Mai 1913) is a true act of Futurist faith which give us great satisfaction - all the more so since the author is kind enough to mention us.”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

Quote from 'Il dinamismo futurista et la pittura francese', Boccioni, in 'Lacerba', August 1913; as quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 118
1913

Faith

“I like the aliveness of it [theater] – that awful feeling of being on the spot. I must assume the responsibility for that moment, for those actions that happen at that particular time. I don't find theater that different from painting, and it's not that I think of painting as theater or vice versa. I tend to think of working as a kind of involvement with materials, as well as rather focused interest which changes.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

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

Feeling , Thinking , Change , Time

“The important task of all art is to destroy the static equilibrium by establishing a dynamic one. Non-figurative art demands an attempt of what is a consequence of this task, the destruction of particular form and the construction of a rhythm of mutual relations, of mutual forms, or free lines.... the law of the denaturalization of matter is of fundamental importance. In painting, the primary color that is as pure as possible realizes this abstraction of natural color.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote in: 'Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art', Piet Mondrian (1937); in 'Documents of modern Art' ed. Robert Motherwell for Wittenborn, Schulz, New York 1945
1930's

Law , Art , Color , Nature

“Titian, having adorned Venice, or rather all Italy and other parts of the world, with excellent paintings, well merits to be loved and respected by artists, and is in many things to be admired and imitated also, as one who has produced, and is producing, works of infinite merit; nay, such as must endure while the memory of illustrious men shall remain.”

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

Source: Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, 1852, p. 402.

Love , Men , World , Memory

“There is a great difference between painting a face and not washing it.”

Thomas Fuller (1608–1661) English churchman and historian

Church History, Book VII, Section 32.

“Human paint, produce films and videos; they dance, dream and make music; they engage in political action, exchange goods, perform rituals, build houses start wars, act in plays, try to please patrons- and so on… They contain patterns, press the practitioners to "conform" and in this way mold their thought, their perception, their actions, and their discriminative abilities.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend (1924–1994) Austrian-born philosopher of science

pg 28.
Conquest of Abundance (2001 [posthumous])

War , Dreams , Music , Way

“Ugly. Is irrelevant. It is an immeasurable insult to a woman, and then supposedly the worst crime you can commit as a woman. But ugly, as beautiful, is an illusion. A matter of taste, a whim, an eye, a beholder, an opinion, a spin, light crossing the frame, paint, projection. The moment. Context.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Weblog

Beauty , Light

“My old landscapes of Pennsylvania are worth so much now that I have to hide them, so I don't get put in an even higher tax bracket. For years nobody would pay a dime for them. They're still the same paintings. They didn't get any better. I treasure them as much as my recent black and white abstracts... My dealer was furious when I showed him my latest works. I'm returning to color. He tells me to ride it out and change when the fashion change. I told him no! I told him I paint each painting from the heart. I have followed my heart all my life.”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

1959
Quote from a speech of Kline in the jazz club The Five Spot, as quoted in Introduction by David Anram, The Stamp of Impulse, Abstract expressionist prints, David Anram, David Acton, p. 21
1960's

Life , Color , Fashion , Change

“The essential of painting is that something, that 'ethereal glue', that intermediary product which the artist secretes with all his creative being and which he has to place, to encrust, to impregnate into the pictorial stuff of the painting.”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

Yves Klein, catalogue of exhibition in the Jewish Museum, New York 1967, p. 18
from posthumous publications

Secret

“[Bai Juyi] utilized Confucianism to order his conduct, utilized Buddhism to cleanse his mind, and then utilized history, paintings, mountains, rivers, wine, music and song to soothe his spirit.”

Bai Juyi (772–846) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

Composition for his own tomb inscription, as quoted in Lin Yutang's The Importance of Living (1940), p. 411

Music , History , Mountain , Wine

“It is not my aim and object to paint a cow for the cow's sake or a tree for the tree's, but by means of the whole to create a beautiful and huge impression which nature sometimes creates, also with most simple means. (translation from the Dutch original: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

Gerard Bilders (1838–1865) painter from the Netherlands

version in original Dutch / citaat van Bilders' brief, in het Nederlands: Het is mijn doel niet eene koe te schilderen om de koe, noch een boom om den boom; het is om door het geheel een indruk te weeg te brengen, dien de natuur somtijds maakt, een grootschen, schoonen indruk, ook door de eenvoudigste middelen.
Quote of Gerard Bilders in his letter c. 1861-1864; 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

Beauty , Nature , Tree

“India is always in my heart and I put that in my paintings and sometimes in my dairies and letters.”

S. H. Raza (1922–2016) Indian artist

This is a sum of all my experiences: SH Raza

Heart

“What pleases us about the older paintings is above all their pious simplicity... However, we do not want to become simple as many have done, but rather become pious and imitate their virtues.”

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Swedish painter

Quote of Friedrich, in C. D. Eberlein, C. D. Friedrich Bekenntnisse, pp. 72-73; as cited by Linda Siegel in Caspar David Friedrich and the Age of German Romanticism, Boston Branden Press Publishers, 1978, p. 36
it is possible that Friedrich refers critically in the second part of his remark to the Nazarenes
undated

“It costs a beautiful person no exertion to paint her image on our eyes; yet how splendid is that benefit! It costs no more for a wise soul to convey his quality to other men.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

“Uses of Great Men,”
1850s, Representative Men (1850)

Men , Beauty , Soul , Personality

“What particularly attracted me [in his painting 'Still-life with Musical instruments', 1908 – 1909].... was the materialization of this new space that I felt to be in the offing. So I began to concentrate on still-life's, because in the still-life you have a tactile, I might almost say a manual space... This answered to the hankering I have always had to touch things and not merely see them. It was this space that particularly attracted me, for this was the first concern of Cubism, the investigation of space.... In tactile space you measure the distance separating you from the object, whereas in visual space you measure the distance separating things from each other. This is what led me, long ago, from landscape to still-life.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Source: posthumous quotes, Braque', (1968), p. 41

Life , Music

“The thing that I love about acting is the fact that I can help people feel things, know themselves or feel less alone. It's my form of expression, in the same way that someone might paint a picture or sing a song in that you're hoping that it moves somebody outside of their own way of thinking.”

Naomi Watts (1968) British actress and film producer

Interview at Dark Horizons (7 December 2005) http://www.darkhorizons.com/news05/kong3.php

Love , People , Hope , Way

“The large 'White Flower' [Georgia painted in 1929] with the golden heart is something I have to say about White – quite different from what White has been meaning to me. Whether the flower or the color is the focus I do not know. I do know that the flower is painted large to convey to you my experience of the flower – and what is my experience of the flower if it is not color.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

both quotes in a letter to William M. Milliken, New York November 1, 1930; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 227
1930s

Color , Flowers , Heart

“If America is to produce great painters and if young artists wish to assume a place in the history of the art of their country, their first desire should be to remain in America to peer deeper into the heart of American life, rather than spend their time abroad obtaining a superficial view of the art of the Old World. In the days when I studied abroad conditions were entirely different. The facilities for study in this country were meagre. There were even no life classes in our art schools and schools of painting. Naturally one had to seek instruction elsewhere, abroad. Today we need not do that.”

Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) American painter

Interview, Philadelphia Press; quoted in Lloyd Goodrich, Thomas Eakins (1933).

Life , World , School , Art

“It must be remembered that painting is not the mere gratification of sight.”

Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) English painter, specialising in portraits

Discourses on Art

“About staying in the south, even if it's more expensive — Look, we love Japanese painting, we've experienced its influence — all the Impressionists have that in common — and we wouldn't go to Japan, in other words, to what is the equivalent of Japan, the south? So I believe that the future of the new art still lies in the south after all. But it's bad policy to live there alone when two or three could help each other to live on little.”

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

In a letter to brother Theo, from Arles, c. 5 June 1888, in 'Van Gogh's Letters', letter 620 http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let620/letter.html, Van Goghmuseum
Vincent was busy, trying to convince a. o. Paul Gauguin to come to Arles, and to settle there
1880s, 1888

Love , Art , Future , Help

“Here's what's not beautiful about it: from here, you can't see the rust or the cracked paint or whatever, but you can tell what the place really is. You see how fake it all is. It's not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It's a paper town. I mean look at it, Q: look at all those cul-de-sacs, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too. I've lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters.”

John Green book Paper Towns

Margo Roth Spiegelman, pp. 57-58
Paper Towns (2008)

Life , People , Beauty , Drink

“It is true that the Impressionists perhaps gave a more faithful representation of nature through their discoveries in out-of-door painting. But that they increased their statute as artists by so doing is controversial... If the technical innovations of the Impressionists led merely to a more accurate representation of nature, it was perhaps of not much value in enlarging their powers of expression.”

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

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

Faith , Nature

“My primary concern is visual form. The visual meaning may be discovered afterwards – by those who look for it. Two meanings have been ascribed to these American Flag paintings of mine. One position is: 'He's painted a flag so you don't have to think of it as a flag but only as a painting'. The other is: 'You are enabled by the way he has painted it to see it as a flag and not as a painting.”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

Actually both positions are implicit in the paintings, so you don't have to choose.
The Insiders, Rejection en Rediscovery of Man in the Arts of our Time, Selden Rodman, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1960, Chapter 6.
1960s

Way , Thinking

“A painting is complete when it has the shadows of a god.”

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

Statement attributed to Rembrandt in early biographies, as quoted in The Rise of the Cult of Rembrandt: Reinventing an Old Master in Nineteenth-Century France (2003) by Alison MacQueen
This quote is not to find in the source, Rise of the Cult of Rembrandt: Reinventing an Old Master in Nineteenth-Century France, 2003,p. 287 https://books.google.nl/books?id=N0dVqAsR5k0C&pg=PA292&lpg=PA292&dq=The+Rise+of+the+Cult+of+Rembrandt:+Reinventing+an+Old+Master+in+Nineteenth-century+France&source=bl&ots=SgL2TN2Xct&sig=ZJuOkH35vmifBkzcu5ASLdLyhTI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjx17OkrpfVAhWKnBoKHQlxA0oQ6AEIVzAJ#v=onepage&q=The%20Rise%20of%20the%20Cult%20of%20Rembrandt%3A%20Reinventing%20an%20Old%20Master%20in%20Nineteenth-century%20France&f=false/The
undated quotes

God

“.. because his applying paint to it [the sculpture 'Painted Bronze, two painted ale cans', created by the American pré-Pop Art artist Jasper Johns ] was absolutely mechanical or, at least, as close to the printed thing as possible. It was not an act of painting; actually, the printing [or painting? ] was just like printing except it was made by hand by him. That doesn’t add a thing to it.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

it's just the idea of imitating the beer can that is important.
Quote from 'Some late thoughts of Marcel Duchamp', an interview with Jeanne Siegel, p. 21; as quoted in 'The New York school – the painters & sculptors of the fifties' Irving Sandler, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978, p. 194
posthumous

Art , Idea , Beer

“I was surprised by photography, which we all use so massively every day. Suddenly, I saw it in a new way, as a picture that offered me a new view, free of all the conventional criteria I had always associated with art. It had no style, no composition, no judgment. It freed me from personal experience. For the first time, there was nothing to it: it was pure picture. That's why I wanted to have it, to show it - not use it as a means to painting, but use painting as a means to photography.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

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

Art , Way , Time , Personality

“But there was something else that the Abstract Expressionists taught us: they began to use something besides the conventional means of art; to want other kinds of paint, or kinds of canvas, or ways of making pictures that weren't the usual ways. Some of the next generation, the Pop Art artists [like Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, picked up this attitude and began to put actual things into art. We [=w:Morris Louis and Noland] were making abstract art, but we wanted to simplify the selection of materials, and to use them in a very economical way. To get to raw canvas, to use the canvas un-stretched – to use it in more basic or fundamental ways, to use it as fabric rather than as a stretched surface.”

Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) American artist

Source: Color, Format and Abstract Art' (1977), pp. 99 – 105

Art , Way

“Writing is fifty years behind painting.”

Brion Gysin (1916–1986) Canadian artist

Quoted in Brion Gysin: Tuning in to the Multimedia Age, ed. José Férez Kuri (Thames & Hudson, London, 2003), p. 153.

“Painting is over and done with. Who could do anything better than this propeller? Look, could you do that?”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Quote of Duchamp's remark to Brancusi, visiting the Paris Aviation Show of 1919; as quoted in Looking at Dada, eds. Sarah Ganz Blythe & Edward D. Powers - The Museum of Modern Art New York, ISBN: 087070-705-1; p. 49
1915 - 1925

“My sketch [in watercolor, made in 1861] represents the Hunebed in Tinaarlo in Drenthe, which I drew a few years ago; I have still the intention to paint it [oil-painting after, after his watercolor].. (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:) Mijn schets [aquarel, in 1861 gemaakt] stelt het Hunnebed voor te Tinaarlo in Drenthe, dat ik voor eenige jaren teekende en nog altijd van plan ben te schilderen [naar zijn aquarel]…
In a letter to Carel Vosmaer, 31 August 1869; as cited 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. 156
1860's

“Newspaper men, therefore, endlessly discuss the question of what is news. I judge that they will go on discussing it as long as there are newspapers. It has seemed to me that quite obviously the news-giving function of a newspaper cannot possibly require that it give a photographic presentation of everything that happens in the community. That is an obvious impossibility. It seems fair to say that the proper presentation of the news bears about the same relation to the whole field of happenings that a painting does to a photograph. The photograph might give the more accurate presentation of details, but in doing so it might sacrifice the opportunity the more clearly to delineate character. My college professor was wont to tell us a good many years ago that if a painting of a tree was only the exact representation of the original, so that it looked just like the tree, there would be no reason for making it; we might as well look at the tree itself. But the painting, if it is of the right sort, gives something that neither a photograph nor a view of the tree conveys. It emphasizes something of character, quality, individuality. We are not lost in looking at thorns and defects; we catch a vision of the grandeur and beauty of a king of the forest.”

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

1920s, The Press Under a Free Government (1925)

Men , Beauty , Communication , Question

“A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained weddingveil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or saber done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses’ ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse’s whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Source: Blood Meridian (1985), Chapter IV

Death , Men , Dreams , Color

“1,024 Colours in 4 Permutations'
In order to represent all extant colour shades in one painting, I worked out a system which – starting from the three primaries, plus grey – made possible a continual subdivision (differentiation) through equal gradations. 4 x 4 = 16 x 4 = 64 x 4 = 256 x 4 = 1,024. The multiplier 4 was necessary because I wanted to keep the image size, the square size and the number of squares in a constant proportion to each other. To use more than 1,024 tones (4,096, for instance) seemed pointless, since the difference between one shade and the next would no longer have been detectable.
The arrangement of the colours on the squares was done by a random process, to obtain a diffuse, undifferentiated overall effect, combined with stimulating detail. The rigid grid precludes the generation of figurations, although with an effort these can be detected. This aspect of artificial naturalism fascinates me – as does the fact that, if I had painted all the possible permutations, light would have taken more than 400 billion years to travel from the first painting to the last. I wanted to paint four large, colourful pictures.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Richter's quote from the catalog of a group exhibition in 'Palais des Beaux-Arts', Brussels, 1974
1970's

Travel , Nature , Effort , Light

“Pop art is neither an American invention nor an import, yet the terms and names were coined in the US, where they were popularised much faster than in Germany. This kind of art has evolved organically and independently over here, yet at the same time it becomes an analogy to American pop art due to certain psychological, cultural and economical preconditions that are the same in Germany as they are in the US.... For the first time we are showing paintings in Germany that relate to those terms, representing pop art, junk culture, imperial or capitalistic realism, new figuration, naturalism, German pop and other comparable terms.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Quote from Richter's letter to 'Neue Deutsche Wochenschau', 29 April 1963; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Art' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/art-1
1960's

Art , Nature , Time

“When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

Source: Pensées Philosophiques (1746), Ch. 3, as quoted in Selected Writings (1966) edited by Lester G. Crocker

Goodbye , Age , Music

“As some of you know, I some years ago — a few — painted a picture of Mr. Whitman. I began in the usual way, but soon found that the ordinary methods wouldn't do — that technique, rules and traditions would have to be thrown aside; that before all else, he was to be treated as a man, whatever became of what are commonly called the principles of art.”

Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) American painter

Testimonial dinner, Camden NJ, for Walt Whitman on his seventy-second birthday (1891-05-31) .

Art , Way

“I never did a western while at Universal. I did a variety of roles, including ‘The Climax’ with Boris Karloff. There is a huge painting of me in the film. When it was over, Ernest Pagano, one of the producers, put it up in his office. It took up most of the wall! I wasn’t happy because people thought we were having an affair—which I never have and never would do.”

June Vincent (1920–2008) actress

An Interview with June Vincent (1996)

People , Universe , Happiness

“[ Picasso is guilty of] having dragged French painting into the most dismal 'impasse' and of having led it into in describable confusion. From 1900 – 1930, he led it towards negation, impotence and death. All alone with himself Picasso is impotence made man. Nature havinf denied him a real character, all his intelligence and malice have been employed to fabricate a personality.”

Maurice de Vlaminck (1876–1958) French painter

Quote from Vlaminck's text 'Portraits', c. 1940-42; as cited in 'Dangerous Corner', Maurice de Vlaminck; transl. after 'Tournant Dangereux, 1929' by Michael Ross]; Abelard-Schuman Limited, New York, 1966, p. 25
Quotes dated

Death , Intelligence , Nature , Personality

“Anyone who wants to paint should read Bacon. He defined the artists as homo additus naturae... Bacon had the right idea, but listen Monsieur Vollard, speaking of nature, the English philosopher, [Bacon] didn't for-see our open-air school, nor that other calamity which has followed close upon its heels: open-air indoors.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Quote in a conversation with Vollard in museum The Luxembourg, Paris 1897 - standing before the 'Olympia' of Manet; as quoted in Cézanne, by Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 36
Quotes of Paul Cezanne, 1880s - 1890s

School , Idea , Nature , Reading

Quotes about painting page 16

Quotes about painting
page 16