Quote from "The Awe-Struck Witness" in TIME magazine (28 October 1974) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,908926-1,00.html and in "On the Brink: The Artist and the Seas" by Eldon N. Van Liere in Poetics of the Elements in the Human Condition: The Sea (1985) ed. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka
Variant translations:
The artist should not only paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees within him. If, however, he sees nothing within him, then he should also omit to paint that which he sees before him.
As quoted in German Romantic Painting (1994) by William Vaughan, p. 68
undated
Context: The artist should not only paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees in himself. If, however, he sees nothing within him, then he should also refrain from painting what he sees before him. Otherwise his pictures will be like those folding screens behind which one expects to find only the sick or the dead.
“In Braque and Gris, they seemed to have idea of the organization beforehand in their mind. With Bonnard, he is organizing in front of you. You can tell in Leger just when he discovered how to make it like an engine.... What's wrong with that? You see it in Barney (=Barnett Newman) too, that he knows what a painting should be. He paints as he thinks painting should be, which is pretty heroic..”
1950's, Evergreen Review, 1958
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Franz Kline 20
American painter 1910–1962Related quotes
“The painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen.”
Mauvaises Pensées et Autres (1941)
Quote of Jasper Johns, as cited in Trend to the Anti-Art: Targets and Flags, Newsweek 51 no. 13, March 1958, p. 96
1950s
“Painting it's a blind man profession. Painter is painting not what he sees but what he feels.”
Source: 1961 - 1980, transcript of a public forum at Boston university', conducted by Joseph Ablow 1966, pp. 68/69
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
Quote from: 'Questions to Stella and Judd', Bruce Glaser, Art News, September 1966, p 58-59
Quotes, 1960 - 1970
in Morandi 1894 – 1964, published by Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, ed: M. C. Bandera & R. Miracco - 2008; p. 298
1945 - 1964
Said to avant-garde artists Ely Bielutin and Ernst Neizvestny during a visit to their exhibition (1 December 1962)