Quotes about painting (2699 quotes, page 24)

“As a painter, cursed or blessed with a terrible and vital sensuousness, I must look for wisdom with my eyes. I repeat, with my eyes, for nothing could be more ridiculous or irrelevant than a 'philosophical conception' painted purely intellectually without the terrible fury of the senses grasping each visible form of beauty and ugliness.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

1930s, On my Painting (1938)

Wisdom , Beauty , Sense

“I was enormously impressed by Jackson Pollock and Lucio Fontana.... the sheer brazenness of it! That really fascinated me and impressed me. I might almost say that those paintings were the real reason I left the GDR [ German Democratic Republic ]. I realized that something was wrong with my whole way of thinking... I lived my life with a group of people who laid claim to a moral aspiration, who wanted to bridge a gap... And so the way we thought, and what we wanted for our own art, was all about compromise.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Source: after 2000, Doubt and belief in painting' (2003), p. 37

Life , People , Art , Way

“Nature is richer than I represent it... Nature is so beautiful that when I am not tortured by poverty I am tortured by her splendor. How fortunate we are to be able to see and admire the glories of the sky and earth; if only I could be content just to admire them. But there is always the torment of struggling to reproduce them, the impossibility of creating anything within the narrow limits of painting.”

Eugène Boudin (1824–1898) French painter

Quote from Boudin's Journal, March 1854; as cited in Eugène Boudin, G. Jean-Aubrey & Robert Schmit, Greenwich, New York graphic society, 1968, p. 24
1850s - 1870s

Beauty , Nature

“Nevertheless I like being in Norway [to escape the Nazi threat Schwitters fled to Norway, c. 1937], for it is a country of unparalleled beauty... I paint landscapes and portraits, model portrait, glue and paint abstract pictures and glue abstract plastic art; besides, I write poetry in German... What distresses me most of all is that I cannot live in my 'Merzraum' [a sculptured studio-space, Schwitters had built in Germany in the 1920's, but bomb-damaged in the war] and that it may be given up to destruction. For that reason I ask you once more, can you keep your ear to the ground again, to see if anyone in America is willing to give me an opportunity to shape a three-dimensional room?”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

In a letter to w:Galka Scheyer, 24 July 1937; as quoted in I is Style, ed. Siegfried Gohr & Gunda Luyken, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, NAI Publishers, Rotterdam 2000, p. 41.
1930s
Source: http://www.sprengel-museum.de/bilderarchiv/sprengel_deutsch/fotos/merzbau1933_530.jpg

War , Beauty , Art , Country

“You can look at any painting ever done of Jesus over the centuries, and you can spot immediately that he's not English, 'cos he's very often shown wearing sandals, but never with socks. I think that would be an English Messiah's look, wouldn't it? - socks, sandals, khaki shorts skimming the knee, little Fair Isle slipover - in case it turns, 'cos it's deceptive, the desert - and I think, instead of all that camp and rather beautiful 'Oh Lord, why hast thou forsaken me?' business - instead of all that - I think he'd be up there trying to make the best of it - 'cos moping doesn't help, does it? I think he'd be up there going, 'Cor, here's a pretty pickle. No, I didn't do it either, but you don't like to say, do you?' (Wrap Up Warm tour, May 2004)”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

Stand-up

Beauty , Business , Thinking , Help

“It's more like I'm having an experience than making a picture. So I've never had anyone around. I never have. People are different, but I have to really be with no interference. And it takes me hours. Painting a picture is a very short thing if it goes well, but the sitting and thinking... I usually go off on stories that have nothing to do with the painting, and sometimes I sit in the opposite room to where I work. If I can get a good hot story I can paint better, but sometimes I'm not thinking about the painting, I'm thinking about the subject. Lots of times I'll sit in another room and then I might just go in. It takes a lot of freedom. I'm working for two years on a subject now: ten paintings, and that can carry on for two years. I worked last summer and I started this summer and with just the simplest motif I just can't seem to do it. And everything slowed down.”

Cy Twombly (1928–2011) American painter

Source: 2000 - 2011, Cy Twombly, 2000', by David Sylvester (June 2000), pp. 179-180

People , Thinking , Freedom , Time

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

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

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

Age , Exercises , Nature , Effort

“I really like painting on unusual base, such as zinc plates, which are already subjected to rain. These are old plates, spoiled by time and weather. I paint very subtle paintings on such a ground. On the other hand, paintings on a sponge, which may seem harsh in terms of subject matter – are, contrary to appearances, very soft and pleasant. It is nice, for example, to move them and hang them.”

Tomasz Vetulani (1965) Polish artist

There is no threat. Weapons and colour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqfjr78Pyfs, video, Galeria Olympia, 23 Novmeber 2017 (in Polish)

Appearance , Time , Weather

“.. that one [a tree study in Gabriël's studio] is from my early times; I don't make them that way anymore; look how the thing is painted..; and those days my teachers told me that nothing would come of me in this way. What kind of folks were they? [o. a. his early and short teacher Koekoek, c. 1844-45] And which guys belonged to them? Well, let's keep mum about that; all those guys are dead already. But those days [c. 1840's] it was the ruling idea to use nature only as a tool; she had to be embellished later with imagination and so on …. imagination …. the stupidest thing in the world. (L. de Haes asked him: Do you think imagination is so improper?) Improper, I think it is simply an unhealthy trait. You see; imagination is the proper way to insanity. Imagine that you start painting from your imagination without knowing nature; after all, there will be no result whatsoever. All those people of imagination imagine so much, and it is the greatest misfortune you can have in life, you know what it is good for: to idealize your faults.”

Paul Gabriël (1828–1903) painter (1828-1903)

translation from the Dutch original: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch / citaat van Paul Gabriël, in Nederlands: ..da's er een [ een boom-studie] uit m'n eersten tijd; zoo doe 'k het niet meer; kijk dat ding eens geschilderd wezen; en in dien tijd zeiden mijn leermeesters dat er op die manier niets van mij terecht zou komen. Wat een lui waren dat hè [o.a. zijn tijdelijke vroege leermeester Koekoek, c. 1844-45]? En wie waren dat zoo al? Ja daar zullen we maar over zwijgen; die menschen zijn nu al dood; maar 't was toen de opvatting, de natuur alleen als hulpmiddel te gebruiken; zij moest nog verfraaid worden met verbeelding en zoo al meer .... imaginatie.... 't stomste wat er op de wereld is. (L. de Haes: Vindt u verbeelding dan zoo verwerpelijk?) Verwerpelijk, och ik vind het eenvoudig een ziekelijke eigenschap, zie je wel; verbeelding, dat is de weg naar de krankzinnigheid. Verbeeld je dat je uit je verbeelding gaat schilderen zonder de natuur te kennen; daar komt immers niets van terecht. Al die menschen van verbeelding verbeelden zich zoo veel, en 't is 't grootste ongeluk wat je op de wereld kan hebben, weet je waar 't alleen goed voor is: om je gebreken te idealiseeren.
Quote of Gabriël, 1893; as cited by L. de Haes, in 'P.J.C. Gabriël'; published in Elsevier's geïllustreerd maandschrift 3., April/May 1893, pp. 453-473
1880's + 1890's

Life , People , World , Way

“My aim is always to get hold of the magic of reality and to transfer this reality in painting – to make the invisible visible through reality... What helps me most in this task is the penetration of space. Height, width and depth are the three phenomena which I must transfer into one plane to form the abstract surface of the picture, and thus to protect myself from the infinity of space. My figures come and go, suggested by fortune or misfortune. I try to fix them divested of their apparent accidental quality.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

Source: 1930s, On my Painting (1938), p. 12

Reality , Help

“It is in accordance with the impression that the plate ought to be painted; it gives you an impact, you translate the impact, and it is this which is truly artistic. It is like this that modern art began. And note that he was right. His plates were not round, but he was right in principle.”

The Mother (1878–1973) spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo

As quoted in "Paris (1897-1904)", and in The Mother on Art http://www.motherandsriaurobindo.org/Content.aspx?ContentURL=/_staticcontent/sriaurobindoashram/-02%20the%20mother/the%20mother%20as%20an%20artist/-05%20mother%20on%20art.htm

Art

“Polyphonic painting is superior to music in that, here, the time element becomes a spatial element. The notion of simultaneity stands out even more richly.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Paul Klee, quote from 'Diaries III', 1917; as quoted in 'Klee & Kandinsky', 2015 exhibition text, Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau Munich, 2015-2016 https://www.zpk.org/en/exhibitions/review_0/2015/klee-kandinsky-969.html
1916 - 1920

Music , Time

“I am working again on my painting 'Moscow' ['Moscow I' ('Mockba I'), 1916]. It is slowly taking shape in my imagination. And what was in the realm of wishing is now assuming real forms. What I have been lacking with this idea was depth and richness of sound, very earnest, complex, and easy at the same time.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote in his letter to Gabriele Münter, September 4, 1916; as cited in Hans K. Rothel and Jean K. Benjamin, Kandinsky: Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Volume Two, 1916–1944; Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y, 1984, p. 580
1916 -1920

Imagination , Idea , Time

“[the Cubist painters who].. continued to paint objects motionless, frozen, and all the static aspects of Nature; they worship the traditionalism of w:Poussin, of w:Ingres, of Corot, ageing and petrifying their art with an obstinate attachment to the past, which to our eyes remains totally incomprehensible.”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

Source: 1912, Les exposants au public', 1912, pp. 2, 3.

Age , Art , Nature , Past

“During my youth, I was fascinated by the colors of Van Goth's paintings”

Joseph Pisani (1971) American artist and photographer

As quoted in "Ein Nomade mit satändigem Sitz in Zürich" by Natalie Isenring Tages Anzeiger (January 24, 2008), p. 58

Youth , Color

“I've explored a variety of directions and themes over the years. But I think in my painting you can see the signature of one artist, the work of one wrist.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

Quote from Abstract Expressionism, Barbara Hess, Taschen Köln, 2006, p. 15
1990s - 2000s

Thinking

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

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

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

Hope , Art , Business , Study

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

Agnes Martin (1912–2004) American artist

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

People , World , Nature , Joy

“Lately, I appeared in some foreign media channels, which resulted in more attacks against me, and the number of threats of murder or physical harm against me have increased due to the creation of ugly hashtags by instigators, for the purpose of inciting and mobilizing followers against me; this does not represent a tolerant society at all. In these interviews, I spoke about my experience and what I went through personally, and I always ended what I said with my optimism towards the future of the Kingdom and its youth, but - unfortunately - this part was usually omitted during the editing stages of said interviews. What the majority does not know is that, for the past 4 years, I have refused to appear in interviews with foreign media channels, because I knew of the threat that they pose to individuals and for fear of being used as a media tool wrongfully, as well as the tendency of some reporters to paint an ugly picture of Saudi Arabia by exploiting and cutting out parts of what is being said by its citizens - especially those who were part of the Kingdom's scholarship program - without any attempt to show the full picture in a fair and professional manner.”

Loujain al-Hathloul (1989) Saudi Arabian activist

A Clarification (March 24, 2016)

Youth , Fear , Optimism , Appearance

“It is in working [= painting] that you will find yourself..”

Albert Marquet (1875–1947) French artist

Quotes by Marcelle Marquet; as cited in Exposition Marquet, Musee des Beaux Arts Nancy, Juin - July, 1959, p. 18 (transl. Norris Judd)

“After 1909, Monet drastically enlarged his brushstrokes, disintegrated his images, and broke through the taming constraints and delicacy of Impressionism for good. Nineteen gnarly paintings, starting in 1909 and carrying through his final seventeen years, finish off the notion that Monet went happily ever after into lily-land.”

Jerry Saltz (1951) American art historian

In New York http://books.google.co.in/books?id=aEUfAQAAMAAJ Volume 43, Issues 14-21, New York Magazine Company, 2010, p. 1

“Kandinsky, Wassily – painter, printmaker and author – the first painter to base painting on purely pictorial means of expression and abandon objects in his pictures.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote of Wassily Kandinsky, 1919 - his self-characterisation in 'Das Kunstblatt', 1919; as cited in 'Klee & Kandinsky', 2015 exhibition text, Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau Munich, 2015-2016 https://www.zpk.org/en/exhibitions/review_0/2015/klee-kandinsky-969.html
1916 -1920

“Good painting is not produced by any unintelligent following of inspiration or temperament.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

The Artist Speaks (1951)

“I paint the impossibility of painting.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

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

“.. paint was always [in history of painting] a means to an end, whether the end was religious, social, decorative or romantic. Now it's become an end in itself..”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Quote in 'Artist's Voice', Kuh; as cited in Outside the Lines, David W. Galenson, Harvard University Press, 2001, p. 109
posthumous

History

“Speaking in front of a large crowd is not pleasant. Once it gets rolling, it's okay. But beforehand, it's murder. I'm getting a lot better. The first interview I ever did was in 1972, I believe, and I couldn't speak. I couldn't speak one word. I only said, "I painted it black."”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

That was my one sentence. And so I have improved.
GreenCine interview (16 November 2005) http://www.greencine.com/article?action=view&articleID=254

“Abstract art as it is conceived at present is a game bequeathed to painting and sculpture by art history. One who accepts its premises must consent to limit his imagination to a depressing casuistry regarding the formal requirements of modernism.”

Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978) American writer and art critic

Source: Art on the Edge, (1975), p. 71, "Lester Johnson's Abstract Men"

Art , Imagination , History , Game

“In my painting, negative space is never arbitrary. (I believe lithographs to be colored marks printed on a ground – the paper and the measure of the ground and the marks are to be considered of equal importance). In my painting, the painting is the subject rather than the subject the painting.”

Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015) American painter, sculptor, and printmaker

Source: 1969 - 1980, In: "Ellsworth Kelly: Works on Paper," 1987, p. unknown : 'Notes from 1969'

Color

“Painting (like poetry) chooses from universals what is most apposite. It brings together in a single imaginery being circumstances and characteristics which occur in nature in many different persons.”

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

the announcement in the paper of 6. Feb. 1799 was necessary because Goya was unable to find regular bookshops to sell the Capricho-prints. That year 300 sets were printed, which meant 24.000 prints!! - without the mis-prints and proof-prints.
The Caprichos was the name of a serie of eigthy prints that Goya entitled 'Los Caprichos'; Goya made them in a combination of regular etching & aquatint technique. Etching gave lines by scratching with needles in the copper-plate. Aquatint gave fields of flat watercolor wash, a uniform tone composed of tiny grains and speckles rather than lines (as Robert Hughes explains) in the same book, p. 176-177/207-208)
1790s, Goya's announcement about 'Los Caprichos', 6 Febr. 1799

Nature , Universe , Personality

“My aim in painting is to create pulsating, luminous, and open surfaces that emanate a mystic light, in accordance with my deepest insight into the experience of life and nature.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

As quoted in The Artist's Voice : Talks With Seventeen Modern Artists (1962) by Katharine Kuh, p. 128
1960s

Life , Nature , Light

“From the top of the campanile, or Giotto's bell tower, in Florence, one can look out over the city in all directions, past the stone banking houses where the rich Medici lived, past the art galleries they patronized, past the magnificent cathedral and churches their money helped to build, and on to the Tuscan vineyards where the contadino works the soil as hard and efficiently as he probably ever did. The city below is busy with life. The university halls, the shops, the restaurants are crowded. The sound of Vespas, the "wasps" of the machine age, fills the air, but Florence is not today what it once was, the center in the 15th century of a great civilization, one of the most extraordinary the world has ever known. Why? What produced the Renaissance in Italy, of which Florence was the center? How did it happen that such a small population base could produce, in the short span of a few generations, great historical figures first in commerce and literature, then in architecture, sculpture and painting, and finally in science and music? Why subsequently did Northern Italy decline in importance both commercially and artistically until at the present time it is not particularly distinguished as compared with many other regions of the world? Certainly the people appear to be working as hard and energetically as ever. Was it just luck or a peculiar combination of circumstances? Historians have been fascinated by such questions ever since they began writing history, because the rise and fall of Florence or the whole of Northern Italy is by no means an isolated phenomenon.”

David C. McClelland (1917–1998) American psychological theorist

Source: The Archiving Society, 1961, p. 1; lead paragraph, about the problem

Life , Money , People , Age

“If I were a painter
I would paint my reverie
If that's the only way for you to be with me”

Norah Jones (1979) American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist

"Painter Song", Come Away with Me (2002)
Song lyrics

Way

“A report was brought to the Sultan that there was in Delhi an old Brahman (zunar dar) who persisted in publicly performing the worship of idols in his house; and that people of the city, both Musulmans and Hindus, used to resort to his house to worship the idol. The Brahman had constructed a wooden tablet (muhrak), which was covered within and without with paintings of demons and other objects. On days appointed, the infidels went to his house and worshipped the idol, without the fact becoming known to the public officers. The Sultan was informed that this Brahman had perverted Muhammadan women, and had led them to become infidels. An order was accordingly given that the Brahman, with his tablet, should be brought into the presence of the Sultan at Firozabad. The judges and doctors and elders and lawyers were summoned, and the case of the Brahman was submitted for their opinion. Their reply was that the provisions of the Law were clear: the Brahman must either become a Musulman or be burned. The true faith was declared to the Brahman, and the right course pointed out, but he refused to accept it. Orders were given for raising a pile of faggots before the door of the darbar. The Brahman was tied hand and foot and cast into it; the tablet was thrown on top and the pile was lighted. The writer of this book was present at the darbar and witnessed the execution. The tablet of the Brahman was lighted in two places, at his head and at his feet; the wood was dry, and the fire first reached his feet, and drew from him a cry, but the flames quickly enveloped his head and consumed him. Behold the Sultans strict adherence to law and rectitude, how he would not deviate in the least from its decrees!”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Delhi. Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. Elliot and Dowson. Vol. III, p. 365 ff https://archive.org/stream/cu31924073036737#page/n379/mode/2up Quoted in Shourie, Arun (2014). Eminent historians: Their technology, their line, their fraud. Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India : HarperCollins Publishers.

Women , People , Books , Faith

“Painting and sculpture are very archaic forms. It's the only thing left in our industrial society where an individual alone can make something with not just his own hands, but brains, imagination, heart maybe. It's a very archaic form. Same things can be said with words, writing poetry, making sounds, music. It is a unique thing.... I think that the original revolutionary impulse behind the New York School, as I felt it anyway, and as I think my colleagues felt and the way we talked all the time, was a kind of a.... you felt as if you were driven into a corner against the wall, with no place to stand, just the place you occupied as if the act of painting was not making a picture.... it was as if you had to prove to yourself that truly the act of creation was still possible.... I felt as if I was talking to myself, having a dialectical monologue with myself to see if I could create.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

Source: 1961 - 1980, transcript of a public forum at Boston university', conducted by Joseph Ablow 1966, p. 66

School , Music , Way , Imagination

“When we read what Goethe says about men we are ashamed of what we have said; when we read what he says about painting and statues we are ashamed of what Goethe has said.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Malraux and the Statues at Bamberg”, p. 194
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

Men , Reading

“Painting lives only through the slide towards the unknown in oneself.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

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

“The problem which Mondrian undertook to solve in nr. 116 [a new painting of Mondrian, exhibited in a group-exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum in 1915 in Amsterdam] was handled very successfully. This work spiritually dominates all others. It gives the impression of Repose; the repose of the soul. Its predetermined structure embodies 'becoming' rather than 'being'. This represents a true element in art, for art is not 'being', but 'becoming'. The idea of 'becoming' has been expressed in black and white…. Through years of hard work my own experiences have led me, before I came to know the theories of Uexkuell or Picasso, to prefer the use of the white-black-grey palette in works of a purely spiritual content…”

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

Quote from Dutch art-magazine: 'Eenheid' (in Dutch: Unity) no. 283, 6 November 1915; as quoted in Theo van Doesburg, Joost Baljeu, Studio Vista, London 1974, p. 105
1912 – 1919

Art , Soul , Idea , Problem

“Well, this man [the T. V. interviewer of Jasper Johns, ] wanted to know why I stopped painting [the so-called famous 'Silence of Duchamp'].... and he had said [it was] because of dealers and money and various reasons. Largely moralistic reasons.... But you know; it wasn’t like that. It’s like you break a leg; you don't mean to do it.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Quote in: Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma, New York, 1996; p. 151
posthumous

Money , Silence

“At that time [c. 1904 – 1905] I tried, by means of lines and by distribution of mottled points of colours [in his tempera painting on paper: 'Russian Beauty in a Landscape', 1905] to express the musical spirit of Russia. Other pictures of that period reflected the contradictions and later the eccentricities of Russia.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Source: 1916 -1920, Autobiography', 1918, p. 29

Beauty , Music , Time

“I paint things as they are. I don't comment. I record.”

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) French painter

Quoted in: Henry O. Dormann (2009) The Speaker's Book of Quotations, Updated and Revised. p. 26
undated quotes

“I hope the message that we fight not a religion, but a group of fanatics which have hijacked a religion is getting through. I understand the propaganda machines are cranked up in the international community that paints our country in a bad light. We'll do everything we can to remind people that we've never been a nation of conquerors; we're a nation of liberators. And I would ask the skeptics to look at Afghanistan, where not only this country rout the Taliban, which was one of the most barbaric regimes in the history of mankind, but thanks to our strength and our compassion, many young girls now go to school for the first time.”

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

Roosevelt Room, (December 4, 2002) http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/12/20021204-1.html
2000s, 2002

People , School , Religion , Hope

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

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

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

Life , Men , Art , Girl

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

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

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

Drawing

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

Lyubov Popova (1889–1924) Russian artist

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

Life , Art , Search , Support

“The famous nude artist, Pricasso, who uses his member to paint, was kept busy swishing his "brush" over the canvas. He was quite a drawcard - and many a male observer whipped out his cellphone to take a picture.”

Pricasso (1949) Australian painter

[Daily News staff, Daily News, South Africa, Sexpo's popularity profitable for entrepreneurial granny, 6 February 2009, 5, Independent Online]
About

Business

“Painted on one side of our Sunday school wall were the words, God is Love. We always assumed that these three words were spoken directly to the four of us in our family and had no reference to the world outside, which my brother and I soon discovered was full of bastards, the number increasing rapidly the farther one gets from Missoula, Montana.”

Norman Maclean (1902–1990) American author and scholar

"A River Runs Through It", p. 7
A River Runs Through It (1976)

Love , God , World , School

“The King determined to spare neither men nor money to carry on the war against the Hindoos: he accordingly directed Etibar Khan Yezdy, the Hawaldar of Condbeer (henceforth called Moortuza Nuggur), to collect all the troops under his command, with orders to march towards Beejanuggur, and to lay in ashes all the enemy’s towns in his route… Etibar Khan now proceeded to the town of Calistry, which he reached after a month’s march from Golconda. Here he destroyed the Hindoo idols, and ordered prayers to be read in the temples. These edifices may well he compared in magnificence with the buildings and paintings of China, with which they vie in beauty and workmanship. Having given a signal example of the Mahomedan power in that distant country, the Hindoos did not dare to interrupt his return…”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn Muhammad Qulî Qutb Shãh of Golconda (AD 1580-1612) Kalahasti (Tamil Nadu)
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Men , Money , War , Beauty

“One has to see a painter in his own place to get an idea of his worth. I went back there [to Corot's studio, after the official exhibition] and I appreciate in a new light the paintings that I had seen in the Museum and that had struck me as middling... He told me to go a bit ahead of myself, abandoning myself to whatever might come; this is how he works most of the time... Corot delves deeply into a subject; ideas come to him and he adds while working; it's the right approach.”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

Quote from entry of Delacroix's Journal, 14 March, 1847; as cited in Selected writings on Art and Artists, transl. P. E. Charvet – Cambridge University Press, Archive, 1981, p. 150, note 44
This visit of Delacroix was the beginning of an important friendship
1831 - 1863

Idea , Light , Time

“So I would say, blanket, from the time I was 17 until I was 20 [1945-48] when I graduated from Bennington [Art College] as far as painting went I had a depth analysis of what made Cubism work and its revolution, and all it opened up. And in history it was just the right moment to get it.... I did in my senior show two little pictures that are every bit as good, though I think ex post facto, nothing can be every bit as good ever - the way the best 'drip' Pollock made four years later than the best drip Pollock is not good -. But I could do Braque-s and Picasso-s that were angelic and completely understood, I mean really. I mean Paul [ [Paul Feeley ] really honored me and by that time it was a friendship, it wasn't a --. I mean our lives were in each other.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

quote about her Bennington-years 1945-48
1960s, Interview with Barbara Rose', Archives - American Art, 1968

Friendship , Art , Angels , Way

“The captain-general’s ship flew at its mast a flag on which was painted a large cross of Christ and also carried cannon, symbols of the new power entering the East.”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

Christ

“The intellectual abstraction of the second period of Cubism was of great importance, however. By its aspirations to the eternal and its 'concept of proportion inspired by the Classics' it revived the sense of craftsmanship concept in many painters. And this perfectly coincided with another of my ambitions – which was to make, with paint, an object having the same perfection of craftsmanship that a cabinet-maker would put into a piece of furniture.”

Gino Severini (1883–1966) Italian painter

Source: The Life of a Painter - autobiography', 1946, Letters of the great artists', 1963, p. 248

Sense , Perfection

“Paintings are memories. Memories of the painter who painted them. Memories that can be shared as well. Paintings are things to remember things by.”

James Rosenquist (1933–2017) American artist

Quoted in Brian Sherwin, "Art Space Talk: James Rosenquist," http://www.myartspace.com/blog/2008/04/art-space-talk-james-rosenquist.html myartspace.com (2008-04-04)

Memory

“Yes, perhaps there is some enjoyment in it [his paintings] too, somewhere.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

short quotes, 13 April 1968; p. 70
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“There are so many lines of that song ( Blood on the Tracks, Bob Dylan ) where you think. That is a painting.”

Jack Vettriano (1951) Scottish painter

Desert Island Discs Sue Lawley, BBC, London April 2 2004
On Art

Thinking

“Bosboom has just as anyone else fussed around things [paintings] from time to time to get his money. Only very few people can escape this... It is almost impossible that an artist who doesn't have the gift to work for the market as well, will always have to make good things. Because, when he has no money he has to earn it. And he will have to strain himself. For something he appreciates the least of all. He can never neglect this... The examples you can see everywhere. If you may write something about him [Bosboom] again, I hope you will take this into account too.”

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

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van zijn brief aan nl:Jan Veth, in het Nederlands:) Bosboom heeft net zoo goed als een ander wel eens dingen afgepeuterd om aan geld te komen. daar ontsnappen maar heel weinig menschen aan.. .Het is bijna onmogelijk dat een artist die niet de gaaf heeft om tegelijk voor de verkoop te werken altijd heeft goede dingen te maken. omdat hij als hij geen geld heeft het moet verdienen. En hij zich zal moeten inspannen. Voor iets waar hij minst voor voelt. Dat nooit nalaten kan.. .De voorbeelden zijn voor 't grijpen. Als je soms iets over hem mocht schrijven hoop ik dat je dit ook in aanmerking zult nemen.
quote of Breitner in a letter to Jan Veth, Amsterdam, Fall 1891; original text in RKD-Archive, The Hague https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/80
Jan Veth wrote an memorial on Johannes Bosboom, shortly after Bosboom's death
1890 - 1900

Money , People , Hope , Time

“The truth [is in his paintings]... When they have a similar structure to and are organized in as truthful a way as nature. When I look out of the window, then truth for me is the way nature shows itself in its various tones, colours and proportions. That's a truth and has its own correctness. This little slice of nature, and in fact any given piece of nature, represents to me an ongoing challenge, and is a model for my paintings.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

In an interview with Christiane Vielhaber, 1986; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Other subjects' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/other-aspects-6
1980's

Truth , Way , Nature

“I was certain that they [ Poussin's paintings which Marquet copied frequently in the 1880's] would never bore me.”

Albert Marquet (1875–1947) French artist

as quoted by Mikhail Guerman, in Albert Marquet – The Paradox of Time, Parkstone Aurora Publishers, Bournemouth England, 1995, p. 11

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

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

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

Light , Drawing

“Today I saw an exhibition of old Japanese paintings and sculpture [in Paris]. I was seized by the great strangeness of these things. It makes our own art seem all the more conventional to me. Our art is very meager in expressing the emotions we have inside. Old Japanese art seems to have a better solution for that... We must put more weight on the fundamentals!! When I took my eyes from these pictures and began looking at the people around me, I suddenly saw that human being are more remarkable, much more striking and surprising than they have been painted. A sudden realization like that comes only at moments.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

excerpt of her Journal, Paris, 1898; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 197
1898

People , Art

“[those paintings that are] done entirely by my hand.... [those, ]done by the hand of a master skillfull in that department.... but this one not being finished, would be entirely retouched by my own hand, and by this means would pass as original; done by one of my pupils, but the whole retouched by my hand.”

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) Flemish painter

In a letter of 28 April, 1618, to the collector Sir Dudley Carleton; transl. from Italian, R. Saunders Magurn, The letters of Peter Paul Rubens, Cambridge Mass., 1955, p.60-61
Rubens is indicating in this letter to a good client the level of his personal involvement in several paintings which were offered then for sale. Rubens is specifying his involvement in a variety of degrees, in relation to the attribution by pupils or by other fellow-artists - like his cooperation in many paintings with Breughel, for instance
1605 - 1625

“Anyone would think paintings were made like speculations on the stock market, out of the frictions of ambitious young people… …it sharpens the mind, but clouds your judgement.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Quote from The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe, Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 34
quotes, undated

People , Thinking

“When I was born 20.6. [18]87, I was influenced by Picasso to cry. When I could walk and speak I still stood under Picasso's influence and said to my mother: 'Tom' or 'Happening', meaning the entrances of the canal under the street. My lyrical time was when I lived in the Violet Street. I never saw a violet. That was my influence by Matisse because when he painted rose I did not paint violet. As a boy of ten I stood under Mondrian's influence and built little houses with little bricks. Afterwards I stood under the influence of the Surrealists... I never stood under the influence of Dadaism because whereas the Dadaist created Spiegel-dadaismus (Mirror-Dada) on the Zurich Lake, I created MERZ on the Leine-river, under the influence of Rembrandt. Time went on, and when Hans Arp made concrete Art, I stayed Abstract. Now I do concrete Art, and Marcel Duchamp went over to the Surrealists.... and at all I have much fun about Art.”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

Source: 1940s, I is Style (2000), p. 100 : in 'My art and My live' (1940 – 1946), Kurt Schwitters.

Art , Boy , Time , Housing

“What I want to produce is something compelling, something full, an excitement and intoxication of color – something powerful. The paintings I did in Paris are too cool, too solitary and empty. They are the reaction to a restless and superficial period in my life and seem to strain for a simple, grand effect. I wanted to conquer Impressionism by trying to forget it. What happened was that it conquered me. We must work with digested and assimilated Impressionism..”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

In a letter to Bernhard Hoetger, from Paris, Summer 1907; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 207
1906 + 1907

Life , Color , Forgetting

“A man may as well hew marble without tools, or paint without colors or instruments, or build without materials, as perform any acceptable service without the graces of the Spirit, which are both the materials and instruments in the work.”

Joseph Alleine (1634–1668) Pastor, author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 320.

Color

“Yes, Johannes Vermeer [Dutch 17th century master painter] paints in thin layers – there is no waste effort – and those small dots – no, they are not like Seurat's, though they contain all the light the pointillist may have wished for, concentrated, hovering before the object, but not obliterating it... Vermeer is not a sun painter, but rather a moon-painter – like Uccello – that's good, it is the pure, final stage of art, the moment when it becomes more real than reality.”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

Source: 1942 - 1948, Arshile Gorky, – Goats on the roof' (2009), pp. 357-58: in: 'A visit to the Metropolitan Museum with Gorky', Ethel Schwabacher]], 1947

Art , Reality , Effort , Light

“No real painter ever wants be known through any other medium than his painting.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

The Artist Speaks (1951)

“Painting, literature, music, are more closely allied than the public usually admit. They are merely different means of expression.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

RODIN, AUGUSTE. L'Art. Entretiens réunis par Paul Gsell, 1911

Music , Literature

“Kandinsky points out [in his book On the Spiritual in Art] that Theosophy (in its true sense; not as it generally appears) is yet another expression of the same spiritual movement which we are now seeing in painting.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

In 'De Nieuwe beelding in de Schilderkunst', Piet Mondriaan, 'De Stijl' No. 1, October 1917, p. 54
1910's

Books , Art , Sense , Appearance

“The Hindus of this region had been victims of Muslim high-handedness for a long time, particularly in respect of their women. Murshid Qulî Khãn, the faujdãr of Mathura who died in 1638, was notorious for seizing “all their most beautiful women” and forcing them into his harem. “On the birthday of Krishna,” narrates Ma’sîr-ul-Umara, “a vast gathering of Hindu men and women takes place at Govardhan on the Jumna opposite Mathura. The Khan, painting his forehead and wearing dhoti like a Hindu, used to walk up and down in the crowd. Whenever he saw a woman whose beauty filled even the moon with envy, he snatched her away like a wolf pouncing upon a flock, and placing her in the boat which his men kept ready on the bank, he sped to Agra. The Hindu [for shame] never divulged what had happened to his daughter.” Another notorious faujdãr of Mathura was Abdu’n Nabî Khãn. He plundered the people unscrupulously and amassed great wealth. But his worst offence was the pulling down of the foremost Hindu temple in the heart of Mathura and building a Jãmi‘ Masjid on its site. This he did in AD 1660-61. Soon after, in 1665, Aurangzeb imposed a pilgrim tax on the Hindus. In 1668, he prohibited celebration of all Hindu festivals, particularly Holi and Diwali. The Jats who rightly regarded themselves as the defenders of Hindu hounour were no longer in a mood to take it lying. (Jadunath Sarkar, History of Aurangzeb, Vol. III, Calcutta, 1972 )”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)

Women , Men , People , Beauty

“Studies in painting: Non. He learned to express himself by means of art in the same way as the child learns to talk. No teaching is needed for the one who is born an artist, and even the expression 'self-taught' is a phony, he thinks.”

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

Quote in a questionnaire, Max Ernst filled out in 1948, the U.S; as cited in Max Ernst: a Retrospective, ed. Werner Spies & Sabine Rewald, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 2005, p. 7
1936 - 1950

Art , Way , Thinking , Study

“The observer usually will see what his fears and hopes and learning teach him to see. But if he can escape these demands that hold up a mirror to himself, then perhaps some of the implications of the work may be felt. But whatever is seen of felt it should be remembered that for me these paintings had to be something else. It is the price one has to pay for clarity when one’s means are honoured only as an instrument of seduction or assault.”

Clyfford Still (1904–1980) American artist

Letter to Dorothy Miller February 5, 1952; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 193
1950s

Fear , Hope , Learning

“I don't paint, I hit.”

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

quote circa 1958; from the movie 'De werkelijkheid van Karel Appel', Jan Vrijman; as quoted in De Tweede Helft, Ad de Visser, SUN Nijmegen, 1998

“Night and day I've been most intensely thinking about my painting, and I have been more or less satisfied with everything I've done. I'm slacking a little now, not working as much, and no longer so satisfied. But all in all, I still have a loftier and happier perspective on my art than I did in Worpswede. But it does demand a very, very great deal of me – working and sleeping in the same room with my paintings is a delight... When I wake up in the middle of the night, I jump out of bed and look at my work. And in the morning it's the first thing I see..”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

In a letter from Paris, 15 May 1906 to Otto Modersohn in Worpswede; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 204
1906 + 1907

Art , Thinking , Sleep , Night

“I was never interested in being just modern – I mean in creating a new style. I simply painted in whatever style seemed to suit me best. But Kandinsky was a thinker and had to express his ideas in words, so he constantly formulated new theories of art which he liked to discuss with Kubín, who was also a thinker..”

Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) German painter

Source: Interview by Edouard Roditi (1958), p. 118

Art , Idea

“A painter is somebody who sees. I paint the moment when I set out. When I set out to see. And it’s the same thing for the viewer. When he approaches the canvas, he is advancing towards an encounter. The encounter with vision.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

short quotes, 14 September 1967; p. 67
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“My first essay at making a steam engine was when I was fifteen. I then made a real working; steam-engine, 1 3/4 diameter cylinder, and 8 in. stroke, which not only could act, but really did some useful work; for I made it grind the oil colours which my father required for his painting. Steam engine models, now so common, were exceedingly scarce in those days, and very difficult to be had; and as the demand for them arose, I found it both delightful and profitable to make them; as well as sectional models of steam engines, which I introduced for the purpose of exhibiting the movements of all the parts, both exterior and interior. With the results of the sale of such models I was enabled to pay the price of tickets of admission to the lectures on natural philosophy and chemistry delivered in the University of Edinburgh. About the same time (1826) I was so happy as to be employed by Professor Leslie in making models and portions of apparatus required by him for his lectures and philosophical investigations, and I had also the inestimable good fortune to secure his friendship. His admirably clear manner of communicating a knowledge of the fundamental principles of mechanical science rendered my intercourse with him of the utmost importance to myself. A hearty, cheerful, earnest desire to toil in his service, caused him to take pleasure in instructing me by occasional explanations of what might otherwise have remained obscure.”

James Nasmyth (1808–1890) Scottish mechanical engineer and inventor

James Nasmyth in: Industrial Biography: Iron-workers and Tool-makers https://books.google.nl/books?id=ZMJLAAAAMAAJ, Ticknor and Fields, 1864. p. 337

Friendship , Pleasure , Communication , Nature

“Exclusive dependence on Persian and Arabic sources, for an account of Muslim invasions, is apt to produce an unbalanced view. The basic prejudices of the Muslim historians, who mostly belonged to the Ulema class, against other religions, make them reject any other account, however authentic, if it tends to subvert their basic belief in the might of Islam. The victories of the arms of Islam have been elaborately described while the reverses have either been conveniently omitted or painted as having ended in negotiations and tribute. Even when described, only minor details are made available.”

Ram Gopal (1925) Indian author and historian

Ram Gopal, Indian Resistance to Early Muslim Invaders Upto 1206 A.D., 1983, p.64.
Indian Resistance to Early Muslim Invaders Upto 1206 A.D.

Religion , Victory , Dependency

“All of them perceived that American Democracy did not imply any equality of wealth, but did demand a wholesome sameness of thought, dress, painting, morals, and vocabulary.”

Sinclair Lewis book Babbitt

Babbitt (1922), Ch. 34

Democracy , Wealth

“Painting is not what my life is about, but it is very important to me, and I am very lucky to be able to give some time to it. The time that I devote to painting is not a lot of time, but I do it 100 percent while I am working, and then there's nothing else that counts.”

Margrethe II of Denmark (1940) Queen of Denmark

Interview with Reuters, quoted on ITN. http://www.itnsource.com/shotlist/RTV/2012/01/26/RTV249512/ (26 January 2012).
As an Artist

Life , Time

“I paint all day. First Becka Brotmann with her loose yellow hair and just a suggestion of dahlias in the background. Then I painted Anni Brotmann at the clay pit, where the sun nearly baked us. In the afternoon I painted Rieke Gefken holding red lilies. I think it is the best thing I've done so far – I'll show it to Mackensen [her teacher in Worpswede] tomorrow. I spent another hour with Vogeler, yesterday.... he showed us a sketchbook full of his ideas for etchings.... many really fine and original things.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

in a letter to her mother, from Worpswede, c. 28 August 1897; as quoted in Paula Modersohn-Becker, The Letters and Journals by Paula Modersohn-Becker, eds. Günter Busch, Liselotte von Reinken, Arthur S. Wensinger, Carole Clew Hoey - Northwestern University Press, 1998, p. 81
1897

Idea , Thinking , Teachers , Sun

“In this painting ['Moscow'], I was in fact in quest for a certain hour, which was and which remains always the most beautiful hour of the day in Moscow. The sun is already low and has reached its highest force, which it has searched all the day, to which it has aspired all the day... The sun dissolves all Moscow in a spot, which as a frenzied tuba makes entered into vibration all the inner being, the whole soul... Rendering this hour seemed the biggest, the most impossible of the happiness for an artist. These impressions renewed every sunny day. They brought me a joy which shattered me until the bottom of the soul, and which reached until ecstasy.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote from: 'Looks on the past', Wassily Kandinsky; published in der Sturm, Berlin 1913
1910 - 1915

Beauty , Soul , Search , Sun

“Someone gave me a pig heart in a mason jar. It was in the context of art, I believe. It was chained to a gourd and spattered with the expected colors of paint. And it was indeed, really and truly, a pig’s heart. I’m vegan and so it was kind of upsetting and pretty ironic, really, because it was the type of person I would want to guess was infatuated or obsessed.”

Davey Havok (1975) American singer

http://web.archive.org/web/20101014172908/http://rocknrolltales.com/read/afi

Art , Color , Heart , Personality

“The house was filled with the piano and violin. I turned towards the art of painting.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

Cubism was born

Art , Housing

“If there was in all France, between 1140 and 1200, a more typical Englishman of the future Church of England type than John of Salisbury, he has left no trace; and John wrote a description of his time which makes a picturesque contrast with the picture painted by Abélard, his old master, of the century at its beginning. John weighed Abélard and the Schools against Bernard and the Cloister, and coolly concluded that the way to truth lay rather through Citeaux, which brought him to Chartres as Bishop in 1176, and to a mild scepticism in faith. "I prefer to doubt," he said, "rather than rashly define what is hidden."”

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

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Truth , School , Faith , Way

“.. the great Dutch school seemed to think of nothing but painting well [characterised by] the total absence of what today we call 'a subject.”

Eugène Fromentin (1820–1876) French painter

Quote from Les Maitres d'Autrefois / The Old Masters, Eugène Fromentin; 1948, p. 108; 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

School , Thinking

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

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) French painter

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

School , Art , Color , Drawing

“[four years younger! ], you better paint houses, you better focus yourself on townscapes.”

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

(translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, original Dutch, citaat van Schelfhout:) Jonge Bart [vier jaar jonger!], je mot liever huize schilderen, leg je liever toe op stadsgezigtjes.
short quote of Schelfhout, c. 1814; as cited in 'Van IJs naar Sneeuw - De ontwikkeling van het wintergezicht in de 19de eeuw', by Arsine Nazarian, July 2008 Utrecht Student-number: 03609533.8
Schelfhout was the four years older nephew of the painter and gave him this advice

Housing

“I believe that painter's judgments of painting are first ethical, then aesthetic, the aesthetic judgments flowing from an ethical context. Doubtless no painter systematically thinks this way; but it does seem to me to be basically what happens when modern painters judge any new manifestations of painting... An artist's 'art' is just his consciousness, developed slowly and painstakingly with many mistakes en route. How dare they collect those ugly early Van Gogh's like trophies…”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

Source: 1950s, The painter and the audience' (1954), pp. 109-110

Art , Way , Thinking

“Each painting contains so much suffering.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

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

Suffering

“I wanted to do something figurative. Well I couldn’t visualize a whole man... I felt that I wanted to make a painting primarily with painterly means. So I flattened out my canvas and made them roughly rectangular divisions, with lines going out in four directions. That is, vertically and horizontally... And then I would free associate, putting whatever came to my mind freely within these different rectangles… I thought of it as related tot the automatic writing the surrealists were interested in.”

Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974) American artist

Source: 1960s, Interview with Dorothy Seckler, 1967, p. 55-59.

“My deepest intention is that some day a sufferer, no matter how afflicted, will be able to look at a painting, at a photograph, and be instantly healed. That is my ultimate hope. Not to be realized in this life, maybe, but that is what I believe art can do.”

John Diamond (doctor) (1934) Australian doctor

Source: Art for Healing: Guided Painting Then and Now (2011), p. 39

Life , Hope , Art , Affliction

“Let's finally try to talk about a system that transforms all the social organism into a work of art, in which the entire process of work is included, whether it's work by Francisco Goya or Kounellis or mine, as well as agriculture, the sciences, or education or technology, something in which the principle of production and consumption really takes on a form of quality. One must not only transform the creation of paintings or sculptures, but the entire social form. It's a gigantic program.”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

Quote of ‎Joseph Beuys, from The felt hat: Joseph Beuys, a life told, Lucrezia De Domizio Durini, p. 201
1980's

Education , Art , Science

“I was interested in ideas - not merely in visual products. I wanted to put painting once again at the service of the mind.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

In 'Artist's Voice', Kuh; p. 89; as quoted in Writings of Marcel Duchamp, Sanouillet and Peterson, p. 125
posthumous

Idea

“To have that under one's eyes and not paint it is stupid.”

Jules Dupré (1811–1889) French painter

Dupré, quoted by Albert Wolff, 1880's, 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. 35
Jules Dupré was passing some Summer-weeks at Cayeux-sur-Mer, looking out on the sea from his window. From this day he transformed in a painter of marines; according to Wolff

Stupidity

“What was the truth for the painters of yesterday is but a falsehood today. We declare, for instance, that a portrait must not like the sitter... To paint a human figure, you must not paint it; you must render its surrounding [aura-like] atmosphere. Space no longer exists... Who can still believe in the opacity of bodies, since our sharpened and multiplied sensibilities has already penetrated the obscure manifestations of mediums? Why should we forget in our creations the doubled power of our sight, capable of giving analogous to those of X-rays?”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

As quoted in: John F. Moffitt (2003) Alchemist of the Avant-Garde: The Case of Marcel Duchamp, p. 87.
1910, Manifesto of Futurist Painters,' April 1910

Truth , Forgetting

“Painting is so stupid, so simple. I paint to get out of the through. I paint my misery.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

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

Stupidity

“I have been living a hermit-life, though always with my pencil in my hand... How much real delight have I had with the study of landscape this summer! Either I am myself improved in the art of seeing nature, which Sir Joshua call painting, or nature has unveiled her beauties to me less fastidiously. Perhaps there is something of both, so we will divide the compliment.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Quote from Constable's letter to Rev. John Fisher (22 July 1812), as quoted in Richard Friedenthal, Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock (Thames and Hudson, London, 1963), p. 40
1800s - 1810s

Life , Beauty , Art , Nature

“De Chirico [Italian painter, later admired by the Surrealists as 'early Surrealist'] found himself in 1912 confronted with the problem of following one of the roads already opened or of opening a new road. He avoided Fauvism as well as Cubism and introduced what could be called 'metaphysical painting'. Instead of exploiting the coming medium of abstraction, he organized on his canvases the meeting of elements which could only meet in a 'metaphysical world'. These elements, painted in the minutest technique, were 'exposed' on a horizontal plane in orthodox perspective. This technique, in opposition to the Cubist or the purely abstract formula in full bloom at the moment, protected de Chirico’s position and allowed him to lay down the foundation of what was to become Surrealism ten years later.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Quote by Marcel Duchamp, 1943, from 'Appreciations of other artists': Giorgio de Chirico (painter, writer, illustrator); as cited in Catalog, Collection of the Societé Anonyme, eds. Michel Sanouillet / Elmer Peterson, London 1975, pp. 143- 159
1921 - 1950

World , Problem

“And then, all of a sudden, it was as though through those dark eyes an electrical circuit had been struck. She sat fascinated. Snake-and-bird fascinated. Afterwards she could not recall the details of what he had said. She remembered only that she had been absorbed, rapt, lost, for over ten minutes by the clock. She had perceived images conjured up from the dead past: a hand trailed in clear river water, deliciously cool, while the sun smiled and a shoal of tiny fishes darted between her fingers; the crisp flesh of a ripe apple straight from the tree, so juicy it ran down her chin; grass between her bare toes, the turf like springs so that she seemed not to bear the whole of her weight on her soles but to be floating, dreamlike, in slow motion, instantly transported to the moon; the western sky painted with vast heart-tearing slapdash streaks of red below the bright steel-blue of clouds, and stars coming snap-snap into view against the eastern dark; wind gentle in her hair and on her cheeks, bearing flower perfumes, dusting her with petals; snow cold to the palm as it was shaped into a ball; laughter echoing from a dark lane where only lovers walked, not thieves and muggers; butter like an ingot of soft gold; ocean spray sharp and clean as the edge of an axe; with the same sense of safe, provided rightly used; round pebbles polychrome beside a pool; rain to which a thirsty mouth could open, distilling the taste of a continent of air... And under, and through, and in, and around all this, a conviction: “Something can be done to get that back!”
She was crying. Small tears like ants had itched their paths down her cheeks. She said, when she realized he had fallen silent, “But I never knew that! None of it! I was born and raised right here in New York!””

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

”But don’t you think you should have known it?” Austin Train inquired gently.
September “MINE ENEMIES ARE DELIVERED INTO MY HAND”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Smile , Star , Spring , Flowers

“To talk about paintings is not only difficult but perhaps pointless, too. You can only express in words what words are capable of expressing, what language can communicate. Painting has nothing to do with that... Painting is another form of thinking.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Quote, 1970's; from the documentary 'Gerhard Richter - Painting', Corrinna Belz, 2011
1970's

Communication , Thinking

Quotes about painting page 24

Quotes about painting
page 24