“One cannot argue or explain in paint.”

— Patrick Swift

The Artist Speaks (1951)
Context: Any painter who thinks he has something to say to the people, or anything to contribute to the world of ideas or literature, is treading dangerous ground; the influence of literature on painting is at all times dangerous if not deadly. Painting is a visual art; and the job of the artist must be to create in visual terms the tension experienced. One cannot argue or explain in paint. The aim is not to put in everything that will help, but as little as one can help, so that a picture is in one sense a “sum of destructions”. It is a question of honesty and courage: “One produces only the necessary” — Degas

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Patrick Swift 60

British artist 1927–1983

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“There is nothing in his (of Mario Bardi) painting which Sicily cannot explain.”

Leonardo Sciascia (1921–1989) Italian writer

Non c'è niente nella sua pittura che la Sicilia non possa spiegare.
"Storia dell'arte in Sicilia: Mario Bardi", volume 2 (1984), Palermo: Edizioni del Sole (ed.) p. 243 " https://books.google.it/books?id=ntfpAAAAMAAJ"(in Italian).

“There is something in painting which cannot be explained, and that something is the essential. You come to Nature with your theories, and she knocks them all flat.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

As quoted in Masterpieces of painting from the National Gallery of Art (1944), p. 168
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“Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? no. Just as one can never learn how to paint.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

“The only valid thing in art is that which cannot be explained. To explain away the mystery of a great painting – if such a feat were possible – would be irreparable harm… If there is no mystery then there is no 'poetry', the quality I value above all else in art. What do I mean by 'poetry'? It is to a painting what life is to man… For me it is a matter of harmony, of rapports, of rhythm and – most important for my own work – of 'metamorphosis”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

1946 - 1963, interview with John Richardson' (1957)

“Being an artist now means to question the nature of art. If one is questioning the nature of painting, one cannot be questioning the nature of art. If an artist accepts painting (or sculpture) he is accepting the tradition that goes with it. That’s because the word art is general and the word painting is specific. Painting is a kind of art. If you make paintings you are already accepting (not questioning) the nature of art. One is then accepting the nature of art to be the European tradition of a painting-sculpture dichotomy.”

Joseph Kosuth (1945) American conceptual artist

Joseph Kosuth in: Arthur R. Rose, “Four Interviews,” Arts Magazine (February, 1969).

“It is essential to bear in mind that the world of the mystics, like that of modern physics, cannot always be 'explained' in normal words, but often 'shows' itself the better through visual images.. [from the accumulation of matter and of objects to the radicalism of a gesture, it is a matter of] painting the essential and nothing more”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

Tàpies is citing here Llull
in his 1990 speech 'L'art modern, la mística i l'humor' ('Modern Art, Mysticism and Humour'), Barcelona: Editorial Empúries i Fundació Antoni Tàpies, 1993; as quoted in: 'Tàpies: From Within', June ─ November, 2013 - Presse Release, Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC), p. 12
insisting on his 'magma works' like 'Montseny-Montnegre' and 'Díptic amb dues formes corbes' (Diptych with Two Curved Shapes), 1988.
1981 - 1990

“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

“The art has to make it on its own, without explanations, and it’s the same for poetry. If the poem or the painting has to be explained, then it’s a failure in communication.”

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919) American artist, writer and activist

“Now let acknowledge the fact that to explain the meaning of painting is difficult. And when the form and the content are really new, there is not even a vocabulary with which to attempt to explain the new work. This is a problem for critics and a difficult problem. I think it is about time for the critics to face this problem, as well as the fact that there are a few new forms and ideas in modern painting, that these have validity, that they are here to stay and will be developed whether opposed or not… They should investigate the serious ideas underlying the painting which they malign.”

Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974) American artist

Gottlieb's quote on the attacks of critics on abstract art, 1948
Quote from Gottlieb's Lecture, given at 'Forum: the Artist Speaks', museum of Modern Art, New York, May 5, 1948.
1940s

“Now, at this very minute, another thing is happening which we cannot hear because most paintings do not have a sound-track. Peter is inventing the word "simony" to explain ecclesiastical purchase-power, for which, since his Church later exercised it so expertly, Simon Magus ought to be revered as a patron not a rogue.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Flying Out of This World

“One cannot argue or explain in paint.”

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