“I am not doing very much as yet. I am put out by this manner of the Salon. They will end by persuading me that I have produced a veritable fiasco. But I am not yet entirely convinced of it. Some say it is a complete downfall; that the 'Death of Sardanaplus' [Delacroix painted this painting in 1827 after the drama, written by Byron] is that of the Romantics, inasmuch as Romantics do exist; others merely say that I am an 'inganno' [a fraud].... So I say they are all imbeciles, that the picture has its qualities and its defects, and that while there are some things I could wish to be better, there are not a few others that I think myself fortunate to have created, and which I wish them.”
Quote in a letter to Delacroix' friend Charles Soulier, 11 March 1828; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. 67-68
1815 - 1830
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Eugène Delacroix 50
French painter 1798–1863Related quotes
Statement recorded in the diary of his companion Johanna Fantova, quoted at the end of the New York Times story "From Companion's Lost Diary, A Portrait of Einstein in Old Age" http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/24/nyregion/from-companion-s-lost-diary-a-portrait-of-einstein-in-old-age.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm by Dennis Overbye (24 April 2004)
Attributed in posthumous publications
As quoted in R.v.R. : Being an Account of the Last Years and the Death of One Rembrandt Harmenszoon Van Rijn (1930) by Hendrik Willem van Loon
undated quotes
“I am as convinced of continued existence, on the other side of death, as I am of existence here.”
Raymond, p. 375 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=loc.ark:/13960/t80k3mq4s;view=1up;seq=417
Raymond, or Life and Death (1916)
Context: I am as convinced of continued existence, on the other side of death, as I am of existence here. It may said, you cannot be sure as you are of sensory experience. I say I can. A physicist is never limited to direct sensory impressions, he has to deal with a multitude of conceptions and things for which he has no physical organ....
Interview with Reuters, quoted on ITN. http://www.itnsource.com/shotlist/RTV/2012/01/26/RTV249512/ (26 January 2012).
As an Artist
"Andrea del Sarto", line 70
"Less is more" is often misattributed to architects Buckminster Fuller or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. It is something of a motto for minimalist philosophy. It was used in 1774 by Christoph Martin Wieland.
Men and Women (1855)
Context: I do what many dream of, all their lives,
— Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do,
And fail in doing. I could count twenty such
On twice your fingers, and not leave this town,
Who strive — you don't know how the others strive
To paint a little thing like that you smeared
Carelessly passing with your robes afloat —
Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says,
(I know his name, no matter) — so much less!
Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged.
There burns a truer light of God in them,
In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain,
Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt
This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine.
As quoted in Hope Solo: 'I speak the truth, and people either love me or they hate me'" http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlesports/2012/08/29/hope-solo-i-speak-the-truth-and-people-either-love-me-or-they-hate-me/#6489101=0, seattlepi.com (August 29, 2012)
2010s
Source: posthumous, Movements in art since 1945, p. 15: (in Gorky Memorial Exhibition, Schwabacher pp. 12)
Quote from a letter to Mstislav V. Dobushinsky, = A. N. Benois, 1912; as quoted in Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 – 1922, editor Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, p. 147
1910's
