“Shall I now ask these palette-slaves what poetry means, and in how many forms it appears to us? They want to chain her [poetry], just as they are tied up themselves to their master's palette, [or] to some part of the sacred history.... to a folktale.... a miraculous landscape.... or other pompous imaginations.”

— Barend Cornelis Koekkoek

(original Dutch, citaat van B.C. Koekkoek:) Zal ik nu deze palet-slaven vragen, wat poezij is, en onder hoe vele vormen zij zich aan ons vertoont of voordoet? Zij willen haar gekluisterd hebben, evenals zij aan het palet van hun meester gebonden zijn, aan het een of andere gedeelte der gewijde geschiedenis.. ..aan ene volkslegende.. ..een wonder vreemd landschap.. ..en meer andere hoogdravende voorstellingen.
Koekkoek refers to the German painters who rejected the Dutch (often more realistic) landscape-painters, as 'non-poetic' artists]
Source: Herinneringen aan en Mededeelingen van…' (1841), p. 28

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

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Do you have more details about the quote "Shall I now ask these palette-slaves what poetry means, and in how many forms it appears to us? They want to chain her …" by Barend Cornelis Koekkoek?

Barend Cornelis Koekkoek 11

painter from the Northern Netherlands 1803–1862

R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) Welsh poet

R. S. Thomas : Priest and Poet, BBC TV (2 April 1972)
Context: Any form of orthodoxy is just not part of a poet's province … A poet must be able to claim … freedom to follow the vision of poetry, the imaginative vision of poetry … And in any case, poetry is religion, religion is poetry. The message of the New Testament is poetry. Christ was a poet, the New Testament is metaphor, the Resurrection is a metaphor; and I feel perfectly within my rights in approaching my whole vocation as priest and preacher as one who is to present poetry; and when I preach poetry I am preaching Christianity, and when one discusses Christianity one is discussing poetry in its imaginative aspects. … My work as a poet has to deal with the presentation of imaginative truth.

“Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another; they might also ask themselves how much poetry of any period they can honestly say that they understand.”

W. H. Auden book The Dyer's Hand

The Dyer's Hand (1955), in the BBC weekly The Listener (30 June 1955)

“Poetry interprets the chaos of human life and tries to bestow meaning on it. Without imagination there could be no poetry; and imagination chained by ideology produces only propaganda.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

When the Ayatollah Dictates Poetry http://www.aawsat.net/2015/07/article55344336/when-the-ayatollah-dictates-poetry, Ashraq Al-Awsat (Jul 11, 2015).

“There Poetry shall tune her sacred voice,
And wake from ignorance the Western World.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

The Tragedy of Irene (1749), Act IV, Sc. 1

“There's a reason for poetry… Poetry is a very nonlinear use of language, where the meaning is more than just the sum of the parts. And science requires that it be nothing more than the sum of the parts. And just the fact that there's stuff to explain out there that's more than the sum of the parts means that the traditional approach, just characterizing the parts and the relations, is not going to be adequate for capturing the essence of many systems that you would like to be able to do. That's not to say that there isn't a way to do it in a more scientific way than poetry, but I just like the feeling that culturally there's going to be more of something like poetry in the future of science.”

Christopher Langton (1949) American computer scientist

Christopher Langton, as quoted by John Horgan, The End of Science (1996) p. 201.

“Paris [1933 - 1944] with its wonderful (intense soft) light had relaxed my palette — there were other colors, other entirely new forms, and some that I had used years earlier. Naturally I did all this unconsciously.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote from his letter to Alfred Barr, Jr., 16 July, 1944; as cited in Vivian Endicott Barnett, et al., 'Kandinsky', exh. cat. [New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2009], p. 70
1930 - 1944

“Now I as a painter shall never stand for anything of importance. I feel it utterly... I sometimes regret I did not simply keep to the Dutch palette [of Dutch impressionism ] with its grey tones, and have brushed away at landscapes of Montmartre [in 1886-87] with no ado.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Arles, France, 3 May 1889; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 590), p. 33
1880s, 1889

“Poetry is I say essentially a vocabulary just as prose is essentially not. And what is the vocabulary of which poetry absolutely is. It is a vocabulary based on the noun as prose is essentially and determinately and vigorously not based on the noun. Poetry is concerned with using with abusing, with losing with wanting with denying with avoiding with adoring with replacing the noun. It is doing that always doing that, doing that doing nothing but that. Poetry is doing nothing but using losing refusing and pleasing and betraying and caressing nouns. That is what poetry does, that is what poetry has to do no matter what kind of poetry it is. And there are a great many kinds of poetry. So that is poetry really loving the name of anything and that is not prose.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

"Poetry and Grammar"
Lectures in America (1935)

“He [ Rufino Tamayo, Mexican painter] showed me how to use my first paint box [and gesturing toward an old wooden palette displayed like a prize on the wall] That's my original palette!”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

1970s - 1980s, interview with Deborah Salomon in 'New York Times', 1989

“The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does. By poetry I mean the imagining of what has been lost and what can be found—the imagining of who we are and the slow realization of it.”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

As quoted in C. F. Main & Peter J. Seng, Poems (Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1973), p. 3

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Barend Cornelis Koekkoek 11

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