Quotes about artist

page 3

Source: Outlines of a Philosophy of Art, 1925, p. 7

'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 40
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Sec. 44
The Antichrist (1888)

Quoted in: Raymond Durgnat (1974) Jean Renoir: Raymond Durgnat, p. 370
undated quotes

Quote from a speech of Ferdinand Hodler: 'The artist's mission' (held in Freibourg in 1897), first published in 1923 in Zurich; as cited by Paul Westheim in Confessions of Artists - Letters, Memoirs and Observations of Contemporary Artists, Propyläen Publishing House, Berlin, 1925

As quoted in "The Role of Their Dreams" http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/fashion/07dreams.html?pagewanted=2 by Sarah Kershaw, in The New York Times (May 6, 2009)

Lectures on Literature (1980)

Launch.com October 8 2003

Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons (1974)

Louise Bourgeois, ‎Donald Burton Kuspit (1988). Bourgeois. p. 76: On the art world

Source: 1950's, Interview by William Wright, Summer 1950, pp. 139-140

1860s, Realist Manifesto' - an open letter, 1861

Source: Enemies of Promise (1938), Part 2: The Charlock’s Shade, Ch. 16: Outlook Unsettled (p. 137)

after 2010, Isa Genzken, the artist who doesn't do interviews' (2014)

n. p.
1950 - 1971, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists' - Rosalyn Drexler with Elaine de Kooning (1971)

23 September 1878
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (1978)

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

"The Historian and 'The Gibbon'"
The Death of the Moth and Other Essays (1942)

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

"Do Infant Prodigies Become Great Musicians?", Music & Letters (Apr., 1935)

Quote from: 'Ideological Superstructure'
1926 - 1941, Rußland: Die Rekonstruktion der Architektur in der Sowjetunion' (1929)

Letter to his wife, reprinted in Rilke’s Letters on Cézanne (1952, trans. 1985). (October 23, 1907)
Rilke's Letters

This is a favorite phrase of Jobs, but he is (mis)quoting Pablo Picasso. "Lesser artists borrow; great artists steal" is similarly attributed to Igor Stravinsky, but both sayings may well originate in T. S. Eliot's dictum http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Sacred_Wood/Philip_Massinger: "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn."
Misattributed

Quote in: 'Hans Hofmann' by Cynthia Goodman, in Portfolio (January - February 1981), p. 47
1970s and later

Letter of application to the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire.
Source: (13 March 1832); published in At the Piano with Fauré (1963) by Marguerite Long, p. 31

Source: 1956 - 1967, Art-as-Art Dogma' part II, (1964), pp. 156-157

interviewed on the Danish Monitor radio programme 2005-11-30

Source: 1916 -1920, Autobiography', 1918, p. 31

Preface (1910) to The Bible of Amiens by John Ruskin, translated by Proust (1904); from Marcel Proust: On Reading Ruskin, trans. Jean Autret and Philip J. Wolfe (Yale University Press, 1987, ISBN 0-300-04503-4, p. 57

Interview tapes Cotton & Mullineux

Source: Joseph Nechvatal. in: " Origins of Virtualism: An Interview with Frank Popper http://www.mediaarthistory.org/refresh/Programmatic%20key%20texts/pdfs/Popper.pdf," in: Media Art History, 2004.

Interview tapes Cotton & Mullineux

An Outline of Philosophy Ch.15 The Nature of our Knowledge of Physics (1927)
1920s

Lecture to Fabian Soiety 1917 Art and Life from Vision and design by Roger Fry , Forgotten Books , 2012
Art Quotes

Manifesto (1919)

Variants:
A good traveller has no fixed plan and is not intent on arriving.
As quoted in In Search of King Solomon's Mines‎ (2003) by Tahir Shah, p. 217
A true traveller has no fixed plan, and is not intent on arriving.
Source: Tao Te Ching, Ch. 27, as interpreted by Stephen Mitchell (1992)

Source: So I think, so I paint (1947), p. 112

Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy (2010)

Foreword to The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom (1987)
General sources

As quoted in Paul Klee, 1879-1940 (2000) by w:Susanna Partsch, p. 47

"The Creative Process" (1962) originally published in The National Culture Center's Creative America (1962) and later published in The Price of the Ticket (1985)

Breton's quote in the Introduction to the exhibition of Gorky's first show, Julien Levy Gallery, March 1945; as quoted in Arshile Gorky, – Goats on the roof, ed. by Matthew Spender, Ridinghouse, London, 2009, pp. 257-258
after 1930

As quoted in Artist to Artist : Inspiration and Advice from Visual Artists Past & Present (1998), p. 62
Posthumous quotes

[Adrian Thrills, 2015-03-20, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3003529/Shy-Brit-Taylor-Swift-swoon-Singer-songwriter-James-Bay-lives-expectations-diverse-robust-debut-album.html, James Bay's Chaos And The Calm lives up to expectations, Daily Mail Online, dailymail.co.uk, 2018-08-25]

Source: Death in Venice (1912), Ch. 5, as translated by David Luke

Quotation made in an article published in 1914. Strauss had refused to sign the Manifesto of German artists and intellectuals supporting the German role in the war. Other signatories included Strauss' friends and colleagues, such as Max Reinhardt, Richard Dehmel, Max Liebermann, Engelbert Humperdink and Felix Wiengartner. The original article quoting Strauss was by Richard Specht, and is quoted by Romain Rolland in his diary entry, found on page 160 of Richard Strauss and Romain Rolland, edited by Rollo Myers, Calder and boyars, London, 1989.
Other sources

"Facts That Put Fancy to Flight" (1962), p. 67
It All Adds Up (1994)

1910s, The World Movement (1910)

Ch. 3 http://books.google.com/books?id=HSRFAAAAYAAJ&q=%22It+is+the+nature+of+the+artist+to+mind+excessively+what+is+said+about+him+Literature+is+strewn+with+the+wreckage+of+men+who+have+minded+beyond+reason+the+opinions+of+others%22&pg=PA98#v=onepage
A Room of One's Own (1929)

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

Arthur Symons Figures of Several Centuries (London: Constable, 1916) p. 40.
Criticism

The world goes crazy for Lady Gaga (2009)

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)

Playboy Interview http://www.interferenza.com/bcs/interw/play78.htm (1978)

As quoted in "Nate Diaz discusses win over Conor McGregor" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg6NkqFPOyY (5 March 2016), UFC on FOX, FOX

The Negative (1981), introduction to second edition

1790s, Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)

Richard Long (1980), five, six, pick up sticks, seven, eight, lay them straight, London: Anthony D'Offay Gallery
1980s

Psychology and Poetry (June 1930)

Source: 1920s, "Picasso Speaks" (1923), p. 391.

Source: Essays In Biography (1933), Preface, p. viii
Context: I have sought with some touches of detail to bring out the solidarity and historical continuity of the High Intelligentsia of England, who have built up the foundations of our thought in the two and a half centuries, since Locke, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, wrote the first modern English book. I relate below the amazing progeny of Sir George Villiers. But the lineage of the High Intelligentsia is hardly less interbred and spiritually inter-mixed. Let the Villiers Connection fascinate the monarch or the mob and rule, or seem to rule, passing events. There is also a pride of sentiment to claim spiritual kinship with the Locke Connection and that long English line, intellectually and humanly linked with one another, to which the names in my second section belong. If not the wisest, yet the most truthful of men. If not the most personable, yet the queerest and sweetest. If not the most practical, yet of the purest public conscience. If not of high artistic genius, yet the most solid and sincere accomplishment within many of the fields which are ranged by the human mind.

"A Note on Realism" in The Literary Review (25 October 1924)<!-- also in Contemporary American Criticism (1926) -->
Context: The life of reality is confused, disorderly, almost always without apparent purpose, whereas in the artist's imaginative life there is purpose. There is determination to give the tale, the song, the painting, form — to make it true and real to the theme, not to life. Often the better the job is done, the greater the confusion. I myself remember with what a shock I heard people say that one of my own books Winesburg, Ohio was an exact picture of Ohio village life. The book was written in a crowded tenement district of Chicago. The hint for almost every character was taken from my fellow-lodgers in a large rooming house, many of whom had never lived in a village. The confusion arises out of the fact that others besides practicing artists have imaginations. But most people are afraid to trust their imaginations and the artist is not.
Would it not be better to have it understood that realism, in so far as the word means reality to life, is always bad art — although it may possibly be very good journalism? Which is but another way of saying that all of the so-called great realists were not realists at all and never intended being. Madame Bovary did not exist in fact. She existed in the imaginative life of Flaubert and he managed to make her exist also in the imaginative life of his readers.

Source: The Birth of Tragedy (1872), p. 15
Context: Thus the man who is responsive to artistic stimuli reacts to the reality of dreams as does the philosopher to the reality of existence; he observes closely, and he enjoys his observation: for it is out of these images that he interprets life, out of these processes that he trains himself for life. It is not only pleasant and agreeable images that he experiences with such universal understanding: the serious, the gloomy, the sad and the profound, the sudden restraints, the mockeries of chance, fearful expectations, in short the whole 'divine comedy' of life, the Inferno included, passes before him, not only as a shadow-play — for he too lives and suffers through these scenes — and yet also not without that fleeting sense of illusion; and perhaps many, like myself, can remember calling out to themselves in encouragement, amid the perils and terrors of the dream, and with success: 'It is a dream! I want to dream on!' Just as I have often been told of people who have been able to continue one and the same dream over three and more successive nights: facts which clearly show that our innermost being, our common foundation, experiences dreams with profound pleasure and joyful necessity.

Bruce Lee: Enter the Dragon (1973); In a conversation with an older member of the temple.
Context: A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready. Not thinking, yet not dreaming. Ready for whatever may come. When the opponent expands, I contract; and when he contracts, I expand. And when there is an opportunity, "I" do not hit, "it" hits all by itself.

November 26, 1932
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)
Context: This abdiction of life demanded of the artist is to be achieved only relatively. Most artists have retired too absolutely; they grow rusty, inflexible to the flow of currents.

Diary entry (Munich, 1909), # 857, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918; University of California Press, 1968, p. 236
1903 - 1910
Context: Nature can afford to be prodigal in everything, the artist must be frugal down to the last detail.
Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion, let the artist be truly taciturn.

"Every Time We Say Goodbye" in Sight and Sound [London] ( June 1991)
Context: What is an artist? A provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one... It’s this in-between that I’m calling a province, this frontier country between the tangible world and the intangible one — which is really the realm of the artist.

Source: The Courage to Create (1975), Ch. 1 : The Courage to Create, p. 32
Context: Artists are generally soft-spoken persons who are concerned with their inner visions and images. But that is precisely what makes them feared by any coercive society. For they are the bearers of the human being's age old capacity to be insurgent. They love to immerse themselves in chaos in order to put it into form, just as God created form out of chaos in Genesis. Forever unsatisfied with the mundane, the apathetic, the conventional, they always push on to newer worlds.

1910s, The World Movement (1910)
Context: Hitherto every civilization that has arisen has been able to develop only a comparatively few activities; that is, its field of endeavor has been limited in kind as well as in locality. There have, of course, been great movements, but they were of practically only one form of activity; and, although usually this set in motion other kinds of activities, such was not always the case. The great religious movements have been the pre-eminent examples of this type. But they are not the only ones. Such peoples as the Mongols and the Phoenicians, at almost opposite poles of cultivation, have represented movements in which one element, military or commercial, so overshadowed all other elements that the movement died out chiefly because it was one-sided. The extraordinary outburst of activity among the Mongols of the thirteenth century was almost purely a military movement, without even any great administrative side; and it was therefore well-nigh purely a movement of destruction. The individual prowess and hardihood of the Mongols, and the perfection of their military organization rendered their armies incomparably superior to those of any European, or any other Asiatic, power of that day. They conquered from the Yellow Sea to the Persian Gulf and the Adriatic; they seized the imperial throne of China; they slew the Caliph in Bagdad; they founded dynasties in India. The fanaticism of Christianity and the fanaticism of Mohammedanism were alike powerless against them. The valor of the bravest fighting men in Europe was impotent to check them. They trampled Russia into bloody mire beneath the hoofs of their horses; they drew red furrows of destruction across Poland and Hungary; they overthrew with ease any force from western Europe that dared encounter them. Yet they had no root of permanence; their work was mere evil while it lasted, and it did not last long; and when they vanished they left hardly a trace behind them. So the extraordinary Phoenician civilization was almost purely a mercantile, a business civilization, and though it left an impress on the life that came after, this impress was faint indeed compared to that left, for instance, by the Greeks with their many-sided development. Yet the Greek civilization itself fell because this many-sided development became too exclusively one of intellect, at the expense of character, at the expense of the fundamental qualities which fit men to govern both themselves and others. When the Greek lost the sterner virtues, when his soldiers lost the fighting edge, and his statesmen grew corrupt, while the people became a faction-torn and pleasure-loving rabble, then the doom of Greece was at hand, and not all their cultivation, their intellectual brilliancy, their artistic development, their adroitness in speculative science, could save the Hellenic peoples as they bowed before the sword of the iron Roman.

Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 267
Context: The ethic of reverence for life constrains all, in whatever walk of life they may find themselves, to busy themselves intimately with all the human and vital processes which are being played out around them, and to give themselves as men to the man who needs human help and sympathy. It does not allow the scholar to live for his science alone, even if he is very useful to the community in so doing. It does not permit the artist to exist only for his art, even if he gives inspiration to many by its means. It refuses to let the business man imagine that he fulfills all legitimate demands in the course of his business activities. It demands from all that they should sacrifice a portion of their own lives for others. In what way and in what measure this is his duty, this everyone must decide on the basis of the thoughts which arise in himself, and the circumstances which attend the course of his own life. The self-sacrifice of one may not be particularly in evidence. He carries it out simply by continuing his normal life. Another is called to some striking self-surrender which obliges him to set on one side all regard for his own progress. Let no one measure himself by his conclusions respecting someone else. The destiny of men has to fulfill itself in a thousand ways, so that goodness may be actualized. What every individual has to contribute remains his own secret. But we must all mutually share in the knowledge that our existence only attains its true value when we have experienced in ourselves the truth of the declaration: 'He who loses his life shall find it.

Source: Motivation and Personality (1954), p. 93.
Context: A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization. This term, first coined by Kurt Goldstein, is being used in this paper in a much more specific and limited fashion. It refers to the desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actualized in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.

Quote from "The Awe-Struck Witness" in TIME magazine (28 October 1974) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,908926-1,00.html and in "On the Brink: The Artist and the Seas" by Eldon N. Van Liere in Poetics of the Elements in the Human Condition: The Sea (1985) ed. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka
Variant translations:
The artist should not only paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees within him. If, however, he sees nothing within him, then he should also omit to paint that which he sees before him.
As quoted in German Romantic Painting (1994) by William Vaughan, p. 68
undated
Context: The artist should not only paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees in himself. If, however, he sees nothing within him, then he should also refrain from painting what he sees before him. Otherwise his pictures will be like those folding screens behind which one expects to find only the sick or the dead.

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XIV
Context: I thought of all those wise men, poets, artists before me who had suffered, wept, and smiled on the road to truth. I thought of the Latin poet who wished to reassure and console men by showing them truth as unveiled as a statue. A fragment of his prelude came to my mind, learned long ago, then dismissed and lost like almost everything that I had taken the pains to learn up till then. He said he kept watch in the serene nights to find the words, the poem in which to convey to men the ideas that would deliver them. For two thousand years men have always had to be reassured and consoled. For two thousand years I have had to be delivered. Nothing has changed the surface of things. The teachings of Christ have not changed the surface of things, and would not even if men had not ruined His teachings so that they can no longer follow them honestly. Will the great poet come who shall settle the boundaries of belief and render it eternal, the poet who will be, not a fool, not an ignorant orator, but a wise man, the great inexorable poet? I do not know, although the lofty words of the man who died in the boarding-house have given me a vague hope of his coming and the right to adore him already.

Associated Press via The Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/08/lost-john-lennon-interview-30-years-after-death_n_793700.html
Rolling Stone interview (1980)
Context: These critics with the illusions they've created about artists — it's like idol worship. They only like people when they're on their way up … I cannot be on the way up again. … What they want is dead heroes, like Sid Vicious and James Dean. I'm not interesting in being a dead (expletive) hero. … So forget 'em, forget 'em.

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)
Context: Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known. I am inclined to say that it is the only real mode of individualism that the world has known. Crime, which, under certain conditions, may seem to have created individualism, must take cognisance of other people and interfere with them. It belongs to the sphere of action. But alone, without any reference to his neighbours, without any interference, the artist can fashion a beautiful thing; and if he does not do it solely for his own pleasure, he is not an artist at all.

Last interview (1980)
Context: I’m 40, I wanna talk to the people my age. I’m happy if the young people like it, and I’m happy if the old people like it, I’m talkin’ to guys and gals that have been through what we went through, together — the sixties group that has survived. Survived the war, the drugs, the politics, the violence on the street – the whole she-bang – that we’ve survived it and we’re here. And I’m talkin’ to them. And the "Woman" song is to Yoko, but it’s to all women. And, because my role in society – or any artist or poet’s role – is to try to express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel, not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all. And it’s like that’s the job of the artist in society, not to... they’re not some alienated being living on the outskirts of town. It’s fine to live on the outskirts of town, but artists must reflect what we all are. That’s what it’s about – artists, or poets or whatever you wanna call it. And that’s what I’m tryin’ to express on behalf of all the men to all the women, through my own feelings about women – when it dawned on me, "God! It is the other half of the sky" as the late-great Chairman MacDougal said, right? I mean, they are the other half of the sky, and without them there is nothing. And without us there’s nothing. There’s only the two together creating children, creating society. So what’s all this B. S. about, you know, "women are this" and "men are that" – we’re all human, man. We’re all human. And, I am tryin’ to say it to Yoko, but to all women, you know? On behalf of all men, in a way. If that’s taken it too much on meself, I feel that artists are that – they’re reflections of society... Mirrors.

Source: Contact (1985), Chapter 24 (p. 431)
Context: The universe was made on purpose, the circle said. In whatever galaxy you happen to find yourself, you take the circumference of a circle, divide it by its diameter, measure closely enough, and uncover a miracle — another circle, drawn kilometers downstream of the decimal point. There would be richer messages farther in. It doesn't matter what you look like, or what you're made of, or where you come from. As long as you live in this universe, and have a modest talent for mathematics, sooner or later you'll find it. It's already here. It's inside everything. You don't have to leave your planet to find it. In the fabric of space and in the nature of matter, as in a great work of art, there is, written small, the artist’s signature. Standing over humans, gods, and demons, subsuming Caretakers and Tunnel builders, there is an intelligence that antedates the universe.

Compare: "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal." T. S. Eliot, in Philip Massinger, in The Sacred Wood (1920)
Disputed

About
Source: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2016/08/06/books/book-reviews/life-japans-god-manga/#.XSjK_VVKi70 "The life of Osamu Tezuka, Japan’s ‘god of manga’"

On his journey as an actor in “Edward James Olmos Reflects on the Legacy of ‘Stand and Deliver,’ Three Decades Later” https://remezcla.com/features/film/edward-james-olmos-stand-and-deliver-30-years/ in Remezcla (2019 May 30)

Letter to Frank Belknap Long (27 February 1931), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 293
Non-Fiction, Letters, to Frank Belknap Long

Par l’art seulement, nous pouvons sortir de nous, savoir ce que voit un autre de cet univers qui n’est pas le même que le nôtre et dont les paysages nous seraient restés aussi inconnus que ceux qu’il peut y avoir dans la lune. Grâce à l’art, au lieu de voir un seul monde, le nôtre, nous le voyons se multiplier, et autant qu’il y a d’artistes originaux, autant nous avons de mondes à notre disposition, plus différents les uns des autres que ceux qui roulent dans l’infini et qui, bien des siècles après qu’est éteint le foyer dont il émanait, qu’il s’appelât Rembrandt ou Vermeer, nous envoient encore leur rayon spécial.<p>Ce travail de l’artiste, de chercher à apercevoir sous la matière, sous de l’expérience, sous des mots, quelque chose de différent, c’est exactement le travail inverse de celui que, à chaque minute, quand nous vivons détourné de nous-même, l’amour-propre, la passion, l’intelligence, et l’habitude aussi accomplissent en nous, quand elles amassent au-dessus de nos impressions vraies, pour nous les cacher entièrement, les nomenclatures, les buts pratiques que nous appelons faussement la vie.
Source: In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol. VII: The Past Recaptured (1927), Ch. III: "An Afternoon Party at the House of the Princesse de Guermantes"

On being enchanted by engineers in “Diego Rivera: A Man and His Murals” http://teachersinstitute.yale.edu/curriculum/units/1999/2/99.02.06.x.html (Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute)

Fidel Castro Reader, pp. 238
Words to Intellectuals (1961)

“Schopenhauer as educator” ("Schopenhauer als Erzieher"), § 3.1, R. Hollingdale, trans. (1983), p. 127
Untimely Meditations (1876)

The importance of Street Art comes from the fact that this art is available to everyone anywhere, is made from any media using any technique. Street Art lets you do whatever you want in the way you want and do it without asking anybody. This freedom is what makes Street Art unique.
http://artdistricts.com/clandestine-culture-between-street-art-and-social-activism/

By Hugo Weihe, Christie's International Director of Asian Art and Yamini Mehta quoted in "Raza's painting sold at record price".

Source: How we're growing baby corals to rebuild reefs https://www.ted.com/talks/kristen_marhaver_how_we_re_growing_baby_corals_to_rebuild_reefs (October 2015)

Inspirations (1997), quoted in "Looking back at David Bowie's invaluable advice for young artists" https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/david-bowie-advice-young-artists/

Source: Skeletaa website https://www.skeletaa.com/post/big-mori-iranian-music-industry-needs-to-be-more-creative interview had done by Jack Sancho, 19 March 2021
Source: Rokna News https://www.rokna.net/%D8%A8%D8%AE%D8%B4-%D9%88%D8%B1%D8%B2%D8%B4%DB%8C-8/673017-%D9%85%D8%B1%D8%AA%D8%B6%DB%8C-%D9%85%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%AF%DB%8C-%D9%85%D8%B1%D8%AF-%D9%87%D8%B2%D8%A7%D8%B1-%DA%86%D9%87%D8%B1%D9%87-%D9%BE%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%B1%D8%B4-%D8%A7%D9%86%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%85-%D8%A7%DB%8C%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%86-%D8%AA%D9%84%D9%81%DB%8C%D9%82-%D9%87%D9%86%D8%B1-%D9%88%D8%B1%D8%B2%D8%B4-%D8%A8%D8%A7-%DA%86%D8%A7%D8%B4%D9%86%DB%8C-%D9%86%D9%88%DB%8C%D8%B3%D9%86%D8%AF%DA%AF%DB%8C-%D9%81%DB%8C%D9%84%D9%85

Source: Postscript to the Name of the Rose

V. The psychological working of Colour: Quoted in: Hajo Düchting (2000) Wassily Kandinsky, 1866-1944: A Revolution in Painting. p. 17
Alternative translation:
Colour is a means of exerting direct influence on the soul. Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hands which plays touching one key or another purposively to cause vibrations in the Soul; in: Anna Moszynska, Abstract Art, Thames and Hudson, 1990
Source: 1910 - 1915, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1911