“Before he did all those lovely line drawings, Matisse would make really detailed charcoal drawings and tear them up. He wouldn't leave them about, he thought of them as working drawings. I understand what he was doing: discovering what's there. And then when you come to use line, if you know what you're looking at, it's much easier to make the line meaningful, to find a linear solution to what you want to depict.”
            From a series of interviews with Marco Livingstone (April 22 - May 7, 1980 and July 6 - 7, 1980) quoted in Livingstone's David Hockney (1981), p. 185 
1980s
        
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David Hockney 27
British artist 1937Related quotes
 
                            
                        
                        
                        
                                        
                                        Quote (1964); as quoted in Picasso and Company (trans. 1966) by Gyula Brassaï 
1960s
                                    
                                        
                                        interview at John's studio, Billy Klüver, March 1963, as quoted in Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, Moma New York, 1996, p. 85 
1960s
                                    
 
                            
                        
                        
                        
                                
                                    “Drawing the line,
The Boundary line
Between this form and that
Is what the mind does.”
                                
                                
                                
                                
                            
Art Psalms (2008), Let Love Draw the Line
 
                            
                        
                        
                        
                                        
                                        Quote of letter 295, from The Hague, 1883; as cited in  Vincent van Gogh, Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, catalog-page: Dutch Period 2. - Weaver 
1880s, 1883
                                    
 
                            
                        
                        
                        
                                        
                                        The Future of Ideas (2001) 
Context: A time is marked not so much by ideas that are argued about as by ideas that are taken for granted. The character of an era hangs upon what needs no defense. Power runs with ideas that only the crazy would draw into doubt. The "taken for granted" is the test of sanity; "what everyone knows" is the line between us and them.
This means that sometimes a society gets stuck. Sometimes these unquestioned ideas interfere, as the cost of questioning becomes too great. In these times, the hardest task for social or political activists is to find a way to get people to wonder again about what we all believe is true. The challenge is to sow doubt.
                                    
 
                            
                        
                        
                        “Man is the animal that draws lines which he himself then stumbles over.”
                                        
                                        As quoted in Scandinavian Review (2003), by the American-Scandinavian Foundation, p. 18 
Context: Man is the animal that draws lines which he himself then stumbles over. In the whole pattern of civilization there have been two tendencies, one toward straight lines and rectangular patterns and one toward circular lines. There are reasons, mechanical and psychological, for both tendencies. Things made with straight lines fit well together and save space. And we can move easily — physically or mentally — around things made with round lines. But we are in a straitjacket, having to accept one or the other, when often some intermediate form would be better.
                                    
 
                            
                        
                        
                        
                                        
                                        From an interview in the newspaper To-Day (1894), as quoted in Aubrey Beardsley : A Biography (1999) by Matthew Sturgis, p. 200 
Context: All humanity inspires me. Every passer-by is my unconscious sitter; and as strange as it may seem, I really draw folk as I see them. Surely it is not my fault that they fall into certain lines and angles.
                                    
 
        
     
                            