“A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.”

What Are Masterpieces and Why Are There So Few of Them (1936), Afterword of a later edition

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears." by Gertrude Stein?
Gertrude Stein photo
Gertrude Stein 160
American art collector and experimental writer of novels, p… 1874–1946

Related quotes

Leopold Stokowski photo

“A painter paints his pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.”

Leopold Stokowski (1882–1977) British conductor

Addressing an audience at Carnegie Hall, as quoted in The New York Times (11 May 1967); often this is quoted without the humorous final sentence.
Context: A painter paints his pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. We provide the music, and you provide the silence.

“The desire of a poet for his writings to be in print is as natural as a painter needs to exhibit his work in public.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

A Proper Gentleman, 1977

Gloria E. Anzaldúa photo

“Write with your eyes like painters, with your ears like musicians, with your feet like dancers. You are the truthsayer with quill and torch. Write with your tongues of fire. Don't let the pen banish you from yourself.”

"Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to Third World Women Writers" (1981)
Source: in This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, p. 171

Eugène Fromentin photo

“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

Pierre Bonnard photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Hermann Ebbinghaus photo

“Every intelligent modern painter carries the whole culture of modern painting in his head.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

Abstract Expressionism, David Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, 1990, p. 22
1950s

Wassily Kandinsky photo

“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

Related topics