“Using the scanty means at my disposal I attempted to paint the room together with several objects that I had gathered together, white on white. The white room is an interior to be made devoid of any specific sensualism emanated by objects. Ultimately it is a classic white canvas expanded into three-dimensional space. It was in these surroundings that I rolled across the room, my body wrapped up in pieces of white cloth like a pile of parcels. The pieces of cloth unwound themselves from my tense body, which for a long time remained in a catatonic position, with the soles of both my feet stuck as it were to the wall. […] I had planned to do some bodypainting for the second part of the performance. […] At first I poured black paint over the white objects, I painted Anni with the aim of making a “living painting”. But gradually a certain uncertainty crept in. This was caused by jealous fight between two photographers, which ended by one of them leaving the room in a rage. […] My unease increased, as I became aware of the defects in my “score”-and should this not have any, the mistakes in the way I was translating it into actions. Recognising this, I succumbed to a fit of painting which was like an instinct breaking through. I jammed myself into a step-ladder that had fallen over and on which I had previously done the most dreadful gymnastic exercises, and daubed the walls in frantic despair-until I was exhausted. The very last hour of “informel.””

— Günter Brus

Mühl angrily ridiculed my relapse into a “technique” that had to be overcome.
Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 120 (1985)

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Günter Brus 31

Austrian artist 1938

Günter Brus (1938) Austrian artist

Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 144 (1985)

“When I left South Texas, I realized that I became the other. I was the token of the room. Most of my friends were white so when I went to a party or a wedding or a work function, I would scan the room and only see my face in the people who were serving the drinks or passing around the appetizers. I realized I was the hanging fruit in the room, the living and breathing statue in the room, the object in the middle of the photograph, surrounded by white eyes.”

Mando Alvarado actor

On one of the inspirations behind his play Living Sculpture in “SIN MUROS: INTERVIEW WITH “LIVING SCULPTURE” PLAYWRIGHT MANDO ALVARADO” https://thetheatretimes.com/sin-muros-interview-living-sculpture-playwright-mando-alvarado/ in The Theatre Times

“If you are representing a white body let it be surrounded by ample space, because as white has no colour of its own, it is tinged and altered in some degree by the colour of the objects surrounding it.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), IX The Practice of Painting

“People sometimes think I take a white canvas and paint a black sign on it, but this is not true. I paint the white as well as the black and the white is just as important.”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

1950's, Conversations With Artists, 1957

“I don't think of my work as calligraphic. Critics also describe Jackson and De Kooning as calligraphic painters but calligraphy has nothing to do with us. It's interesting that the Oriental critics never say this. The Oriental idea of space is an infinite space; it is not painted space, and ours is. In the first place, calligraphy is writing and I am not writing. People sometimes think I take a white canvas and paint a black sign on it, but this is not true. I paint the white as well as the black, and the white is just as important.”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

Quote, (1958)
1960's, Talks with Seventeen Artists, 1962

“The roses are a form of gratitude, it is my memory to the public. And the white clothes already comes from a long time. The white is the unification of all the colors and it symbolizes my spiritual master, that accompanies me always.”

Simone Bittencourt de Oliveira (1949) Brazilian singer

Jornal Paraná On-Line, 28 de setembro de 2007

“[.. how the] landlord has had my room cleaned by Snow White and the squirrel has whitewashed the walls with his tail [signed:] - "Sleepy."”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

1930's

“By using a white paint applied to the canvas I make a napkin. But I am sure the white shape is something conceived before knowing what it was to become. This means that a certain transformation has taken place... In a painting, what counts is the unexpected.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Quote by Braque, from 'Le Monologue du Peintre', George Charbonnier, Paris 1959
1946 - 1963

“villas with columns in different styles [in Louisiana, America] painted white, in gardens of magnolias, orange trees, banana trees, negroes in old clothes like characters from La Belle Jardiniere.... rosy white children in black [negro] arms.... a brilliant light which streams my eyes.... the Negresses of all shades, holding in their arms little white babies, so white, against white houses with columns of fluted wood and in gardens of orange trees.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

quote on his journey through America during 1872
Quote from his letter, Louisiana, America 1872; as cited in The private lives of the Impressionists, Sue Roe, Harpen Collins Publishers, New York 2006, p. 113-114
1855 - 1875

“The large 'White Flower' [Georgia painted in 1929] with the golden heart is something I have to say about White – quite different from what White has been meaning to me. Whether the flower or the color is the focus I do not know. I do know that the flower is painted large to convey to you my experience of the flower – and what is my experience of the flower if it is not color.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

both quotes in a letter to William M. Milliken, New York November 1, 1930; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 227
1930s

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