“Every intelligent modern painter carries the whole culture of modern painting in his head.”

—  Robert Motherwell

Abstract Expressionism, David Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, 1990, p. 22
1950s

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 "Every intelligent modern painter carries the whole culture of modern painting in his head." by Robert Motherwell?
Robert Motherwell photo
Robert Motherwell 42
American artist 1915–1991

Related quotes

“A modern painter may have many audiences or one or none; he paints in relation to none of them, though he longs for the audience of other modern painters.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

Source: 1950s, The painter and the audience' (1954), p. 107

Jackson Pollock photo

“It seems to me that the modern painter cannot express his age, the airplane the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of Renaissance or of any past culture. Each age finds its own technique…”

Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) American artist

Source: 1950's, Interview by William Wright, Summer 1950, p. 17

Jackson Pollock photo

“Modern art to me is nothing more than the expression of contemporary aims of the age we're living in... All cultures have had means and techniques of expressing their immediate aims – the Chinese, the Renaissance, all cultures. The thing that interests me is that today painters do not have to go to a subject matter outside of themselves. Most modern painters work from a different source, they work from within.”

Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) American artist

Source: 1950's, Interview by William Wright, Summer 1950, p. 140

Daniel Bell photo

“Modern culture is defined by this extraordinary freedom to ransack the world storehouse and to engorge any and every style it comes upon.”

Daniel Bell book The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

Introduction, The Disjunction of Realms, p. 13
The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976)

“I believe that painter's judgments of painting are first ethical, then aesthetic, the aesthetic judgments flowing from an ethical context. Doubtless no painter systematically thinks this way; but it does seem to me to be basically what happens when modern painters judge any new manifestations of painting... An artist's 'art' is just his consciousness, developed slowly and painstakingly with many mistakes en route. How dare they collect those ugly early Van Gogh's like trophies…”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

Source: 1950s, The painter and the audience' (1954), pp. 109-110

André Breton photo

“Under his [ Marc Chagall ] sole impulse metaphor made its triumphal entry into modern painting.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Quote in Chagall – a biography, Jackie Wullschlagger, Knopf, Publisher, New York 2008, text from inside-cover
after 1930

“In 1940, some of us woke up to find ourselves without hope – to find that painting did not really exist. Or to coin a modern phrase, painting.... was dead. The awakening had a exaltation of a revolution. It was that awakening that inspired the aspiration – the high purpose – quite a different thing from ambition – to start from scratch, to paint as if painting never existed before. It was that naked revolutionary moment that made painters out of painters.”

Barnett Newman (1905–1970) American artist

in Jackson Pollock: An Artists Symposium, ARTnews Vol. 66 no. 2 April 1967; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York 1990, pp. 147-148
1960 - 1970

Edouard Manet photo

“I was painting modern Paris while you were still painting Greek athletes..”

Edouard Manet (1832–1883) French painter

quote from The Impressionists at first hand, by Bernard Denvir; Thames and Hudson, London 1991, p. 78
remark to his friend Edgar Degas, (quoted by George Moore circa 1879). Later Degas reacted: 'That Manet, as soon as I started painting dancers, he did them.'
1876 - 1883

Giorgio Morandi photo

“If you could see what these flowers are. [Morandi's remark, circa 1917 - to the writer Raimondi from Bologna, indicating flowers in the corner of a reproduction of a painting by w:El Greco – beneath the feet of angels and saints]). No modern painter has painted flowers like these. Perhaps only Renoir”

Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) Italian painter

Quote of Morandi; as cited in Morandi 1894 – 1964, ed: M. C. Bandera & R. Miracco, Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, 2008; p. 48
1925 - 1945

Robert A. Heinlein photo

“Wong shook his head sadly. “I sometimes think that modern education is deliberately designed to handicap a boy.””

Robert A. Heinlein book Space Cadet

Source: Space Cadet (1948), Chapter 6 “Reading, and ’riting, and ’rithmetic—”, p. 71

Related topics