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

— Georges Seurat

from an essay by Roger Fry, in 'The Dial', Camden, New Jersey, September 1926
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Georges Seurat 20

French painter 1859–1891

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“The art of avoiding extremes is an art that is drawn on the canvas of maturity and painted with the abstract strokes of many experiences.”

T.D. Jakes (1957) American bishop

Source: The Lady, Her Lover, and Her Lord

“Being an artist now means to question the nature of art. If one is questioning the nature of painting, one cannot be questioning the nature of art. If an artist accepts painting (or sculpture) he is accepting the tradition that goes with it. That’s because the word art is general and the word painting is specific. Painting is a kind of art. If you make paintings you are already accepting (not questioning) the nature of art. One is then accepting the nature of art to be the European tradition of a painting-sculpture dichotomy.”

Joseph Kosuth (1945) American conceptual artist

Joseph Kosuth in: Arthur R. Rose, “Four Interviews,” Arts Magazine (February, 1969).

“The arts (painting, poetry, etc.) are not just these. Eating, drinking, walking are also arts; every act is an art.”

César Vallejo (1892–1938) Peruvian writer

Las artes (pintura, poesía, etc.) no son solo éstas. Artes son también comer, beber, caminar: todo acto es un arte.
Source: Aphorisms (2002), p. 60

“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

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“The most perfect art was Greek art. Raphael is the greatest of all masters in painting.”

Emil Nolde (1867–1956) German artist

Such were the doctrines of every art teacher only twenty or thirty years ago.
1.
1900 - 1920, On Primitive Art – Emil Nolde, 1912

“Art is the illusion of disorientation, the illusion of liberty, the illusion of presence, the illusion of the sacred, the illusion of Nature. … Not the painting of Buren, Mosset, Parmentier or Toroni…. Art is a distraction, art is false. Painting begins with Buren, Mosset, Parmentier, Toroni.”

Daniel Buren (1938) sculptor from France

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“Merz paintings are abstract works of art. The word 'Merz' essentially means the totality of all imaginable materials that can be used for artistic purposes and technically the principle that all of these individual materials have equal value. Merz art makes use not just of paint and canvas, brush and palette, but all the materials visible to the eye and all tools needed.... the wheel off a pram, wire mesh, string and cotton balls – these are factors of equal value to paints. The artist creates by choosing, distributing and reshaping the materials.”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

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“Pop Art is not painting because painting must have content and emotion.”

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“The Art of painting is itself an intensely personal activity.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

X magazine (1959-62)
Context: The Art of painting is itself an intensely personal activity. It may be labouring the obvious to say so but it is too little recognised in art journalism now that a picture is a unique and private event in the life of the painter: an object made alone with a man and a blank canvas... A real painting is something which happens to the painter once in a given minute; it is unique in that it will never happen again and in this sense is an impossible object. It is judged by the painter simply as a success or failure without qualification. And it is something which happens in life not in art: a picture which was merely the product of art would not be very interesting and could tell us nothing we were not already aware of. The old saying, “what you don’t know can’t hurt you”, expresses the opposite idea to that which animates the painter before his canvas. It is precisely what he does not know which may destroy him.

“Clement Greenberg talked about the ideas or possibilities of painting in his - I think -, 'After Abstract Expressionism' article, and he allows a blank canvas to be an idea for a painting. It might not be a good idea, but it's certainly valid. Yves Klein did the empty gallery. He sold 'air', and that was a conceptualized art, I guess.”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

Source: Quotes, 1960 - 1970, Questions to Stella and Judd' - September 1966, p. 122

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

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Georges Seurat 20

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