“Nature has mysterious infinities and imaginative power. It is always varying the productions it offers to us. The artist himself is one of nature's means.”

—  Paul Gauguin

Source: 1870s - 1880s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), p. 39: 'Huysmans and Redon', (written in 1889, published 1953)

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 "Nature has mysterious infinities and imaginative power. It is always varying the productions it offers to us. The artis…" by Paul Gauguin?
Paul Gauguin photo
Paul Gauguin 41
French Post-Impressionist artist 1848–1903

Related quotes

“But the divine mystery is inherent in the divine, a part of the nature of God, and can never disappear. And this means that it is still a mystery even to the mystic who has directly experienced it, nay, even to God Himself. That is why it is ineffable. The mystery and the ineffability of God are one and the same thing.”

Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.

p. 37

Paul Klee photo

“For the artist communication with nature remains the most essential condition. The artist is human; himself nature; part of nature within natural space.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Klee's statement written in 1923, in 'Paths of the Study of Natura' (Wage dar Natur studiums), Paul Klee; in Yearbook of the Staatlich. Bauhaus, Weimar, 1919-1923, Bauhaus Verlag, Weimar, 1923
1921 - 1930

Hermann von Helmholtz photo

“The formation of scales and of the web of harmony is a product of artistic invention, and is in no way given by the natural structure or by the natural behaviour of our hearing, as used to be generally maintained hitherto.”

Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894) physicist and physiologist

The Theory of Sound (1862)

Jean-Baptiste Say photo

“No human being has the faculty of originally creating matter, which is more than nature itself can do. But any one may avail himself of the agents offered him by nature, to invest matter with utility.”

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) French economist and businessman

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Book I, On Production, Chapter II, p. 65

“There is always an unconscious collaboration among artists.... the artist who imagine himself a Robinson Crusoe is either a primitive or a fool.”

William Baziotes (1912–1963) American painter

from Baziote's text for a symposium in 1954; as quoted in William Baziotes – paintings and drawings, ed. Michael Preble, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 2004, p. 18
1950s

Edgar Degas photo

“A painting is above all a product of the artist's imagination, it must never be a copy. If, at a later stage, he wants to add two or three touches from nature, of course it doesn't spoil anything.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

Une peinture, c'est d'abord un produit de l'imagination de l'artiste, ce ne doit jamais être une copie. Si, ensuite, on peut y ajouter deux ou trois accents de nature, evidemment ca ne fait pas de mal.
Quoted by Maurice Sérullaz, L'univers de Degas (H. Scrépel, 1979), p. 13
quotes, undated

Pierre Louis Maupertuis photo

“Nature always uses the simplest means to accomplish its effects.”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

Formulation of the principle of least action, as stated in Mémoires de l'académie royale des sciences (Accord between different laws of Nature that seemed incompatible), 1748, 417-426 (15 April 1744).

Charlotte Salomon photo

“.. even happens that each character has to sing a different text, resulting in a chorus. The varied nature of the paintings should be attributed less to the author than to the varies nature of the characters to be portrayed. The author [= Charlotte Salomon] has tried.... to go completely out of herself to allow the characters to sing or speak in their own voices. In order to achieve this, many artistic values had to be renounced, but I hope that.... this will be forgiven.”

Charlotte Salomon (1917–1943) German painter

The author, St. Jean, August 1940/42
Charlotte's 6th introduction page, related to image no. 4155-6 https://charlotte.jck.nl/detail/M004155-fJHM: '..even happens that each character..', p. 46
this quote is written in brush over the whole page of the painting, without any figure
Charlotte Salomon - Life? or Theater?

Ossip Zadkine photo

“Whatever the apparent aim of the artist, he is called upon first to move the spectator, after having been himself struck by a design or color composition which may or may not have a relation to natural objects. His predilections, his preferences, crystallize afterwards in the choice of means to interpret those natural objects; these means are always, obligingly, of imaginary essence.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

Quote of Zadkine from New York, early 1944; as cited in: Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 429
1940 - 1960

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël photo

“All that is natural is varied.”

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël book Corinne

Tout ce qui est naturel est varié.
Bk. 1, ch. 4
Corinne (1807)

Related topics