“The truth is that, from the immense spectacle of the world, each novelists retains the one adventure which enable shim to give expression to his own essential self, just as the painter sees in nature only pictures painted in his manner.”

— André Maurois

The Art of Writing

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André Maurois 202

French writer 1885–1967

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“A painter paints his pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.”

Leopold Stokowski (1882–1977) British conductor

Addressing an audience at Carnegie Hall, as quoted in The New York Times (11 May 1967); often this is quoted without the humorous final sentence.
Context: A painter paints his pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. We provide the music, and you provide the silence.

“Kandinsky, Wassily – painter, printmaker and author – the first painter to base painting on purely pictorial means of expression and abandon objects in his pictures.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote of Wassily Kandinsky, 1919 - his self-characterisation in 'Das Kunstblatt', 1919; as cited in 'Klee & Kandinsky', 2015 exhibition text, Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau Munich, 2015-2016 https://www.zpk.org/en/exhibitions/review_0/2015/klee-kandinsky-969.html
1916 -1920

“Every artist dips his brush in his own soul and paints his own nature into his picture.”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit (1887)

“Fortunately however, is that [painting] school where Mother Nature is placed in the foreground, and where only she is consulted to representate 'truth' on the canvas or panel. Only he knows the secrets of the manifold diversity of nature. His painting is a faithful copy of nature - which is the highest praise for a painter..”

Barend Cornelis Koekkoek (1803–1862) painter from the Northern Netherlands

(original Dutch, citaat van B.C. Koekkoek:) Gelukkig echter de [schilder]school, waar moeder Natuur op den voorgrond staat, en zij alleen geraadpleegd wordt om 'waarheid' op het doek of paneel voor te stellen. – Hij kent de geheimen van de veelvuldige schakeringen der natuur, zijne schilderij is ene getrouwe kopij der natuur, ziedaar den hoogsten lof, die een schilder kan toegezwaaid worden..
Source: Herinneringen aan en Mededeelingen van…' (1841), p. 27-28

“Art is something given, not reproduced… the painter paints what he sees with his innermost senses, the expression of his being.. every other impression becomes, for him, an inner expression.”

Herwarth Walden (1878–1941) German artist

Erster Deutscher Herbstsalaon (1913)

“Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it. This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientist do, each in his own fashion.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Variant translation: One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought. With this negative motive goes a positive one. Man seeks to form for himself, in whatever manner is suitable for him, a simplified and lucid image of the world, and so to overcome the world of experience by striving to replace it to some extent by this image. This is what the painter does, and the poet, the speculative philosopher, the natural scientist, each in his own way. Into this image and its formation, he places the center of gravity of his emotional life, in order to attain the peace and serenity that he cannot find within the narrow confines of swirling personal experience.
As quoted in The Professor, the Institute, and DNA (1976) by Rene Dubos; also in The Great Influenza (2004) by John M. Barry
1910s, Principles of Research (1918)
Context: Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it. This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientist do, each in his own fashion. Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way the peace and security which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.

“I am just beginning to understand what it is to paint. A painter should have two lives, one in which to learn, and one in which to practice his art.”

Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947) French painter and printmaker

“A painter should never speak because words are not the means at his command. Words cannot express visually dimension at a glance they can only establish their own relationship in time.
However, it is possible for a painter, at certain moments of his development to formulate some of the problems he is facing in the growth of his work. A painting cannot be explained. Words can only stimulate the act of looking.
A visual problem is never put a priori as a mathematical problem but is born in the process of painting and evolves in a state of unawareness of the painter.”

Fritz Glarner (1899–1972) Swiss artist

Source: George L. K. Morris, Willem De Kooning, Alexander Calder, Fritz Glarner, Robert Motherwell, Stuart Davis. " What Abstract Art Means to Me http://www.jstor.org/stable/4058250," in: The Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art, Vol. 18, No. 3, (Spring, 1951), pp. 2-15

“1. To us art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take the risks.
2. This world of imagination is fancy-free and violently opposed to common sense.
3. It is our function as artists to make the spectator see the world our way not his way.
4. We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth.
5. It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. (Rothko said this is the essence of academicism.)
6. There is no such thing as a good painting about nothing.
7. We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless. That is why we profess spiritual kinship with primitive and archaic art.”

Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974) American artist

June 13, 1943 edition of the New York Times, brief manifesto: Adolph Gottlieb with Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman.
1940s

“The artist is obliged to invent the self who will paint his pictures.”

Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978) American writer and art critic

Source: Art & Other Serious Matters, (1985), p. 191, "Saul Steinberg"

“The truth is that, from the immense spectacle of the world, each novelists retains the one adventure which enable shim to give expression to his own essential self, just as the painter sees in nature only pictures painted in his manner.”

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André Maurois 202

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