Quotes about painter
page 4

“The belief that science destroys culture is sometimes supported by historical statements that the arts have flourished only when the sciences have been neglected. This thesis is… directly contrary to history… [I]n the great age of Greece, art and science penetrate one another more closely than in any modern age. …The example of these men in science as much as in art set the modern world afire in the Renaissance. And the type and symbol of Renaissance man… remains Leonardo da Vinci, painter, sculptor, mathematician, and engineer. No man has shown more strikingly the universality and the unity of the intellect.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

"Sense and Sensibility"
The Common Sense of Science (1951)

Men, Age, World, Art

“The Futurists were the first painters, poets, and architects who exalted modern work with their art—
they painted speeding automobiles—
they painted lamps bursting with light—
they painted steaming locomotives and swift bicyclists—
the Futurists stylized their compositions, adopting a violently colored look; with synoptic and geometric shapes they multiplied and decomposed the rhythms of objects and landscapes in order to increase their dynamic qualities and to give an effective rendering of their swift ideas, the states of mind, their conceptions.”

Fortunato Depero (1892–1960) Italian painter, writer, sculptor and graphic designer

Depero (1931) "Futurism and Adverticing Art"; Republished in: Futurism : an anthology http://modernistarchitecture.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/ebooksclub-org__futurism__an_anthology__henry_mcbride_series_in_modernism_.pdf. edited by Lawrence Rainey, Christine Poggi, and Laura Wittman, (2011), p. 290

Art, Color, Idea, Light

“Yes, yes, a formula that's a straitjacket.... not for me! All the same, he tries in vain, does Jean-Dominique [Ingres], to wring your heart with his glossy finish! I said this to Vollard, to shock him, he is very powerful! Nevertheless he [ Jean-Dominique Ingres, French classicist painter] is a damned good man... The most modern of the moderns. Do you know why I take my hat off to him? Because he forced his fantastic draughtsmanship down the throats of the idiots who now claim to understand it. But here there are only two: Delacroix and Courbet. The rest are scoundrels.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), p. 192 in: 'What he told me – II. The Louvre'

Understanding, Heart

“I first met Diego [who became later her husband] while he was painting the amphitheater [at the Escuela National Preparatoria, where Rivera was painting the mural 'La Créación', 1922 -1923] and I would really cherish going to see him paint. Orozco [famous Mexican painter] was also painting [murals] in the Prepa, and I remember one time a group of kids wanted to scratch the paintings of Diego and Orozco... Every day we went for ice cream at a stand opposite the law school... Sometimes Diego himself would pass by, and we would tease him. One day they asked me who I wanted to marry, and I said I would not marry, but I did want to have a child by Diego Rivera.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

27 October 1950
Source: 1946 - 1953, "Song of herself"; interviews by Olga Campos, Sept. 1950, Chapter 'My life', p. 71

School, Law, Time, Painting

“I have always concentrated on a far narrower field of subject matter than most other painters, so that the danger of repeating myself has been far greater. I think I have avoid this danger by devoting more time and thought to planning each one of my paintings as a variation on one or the other, of these few themes.”

Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) Italian painter

Source: 1945 - 1964, Interview, 1960, p. 107

Thinking, Time, Painting

“Light is something very special. It has nothing to do with white. Either you see it or you don't. [George] de la Tour doesn't have light; Monet hasn't any light. Matisse, Goya, Chardin, Van Gogh, Sam Francis, Kline have it. But it has nothing to do with being the best painter at all.”

Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) American painter

Quote of Mitchel in Marcia Tucker's Whitney catalogue (1974); as cited in Jane Livingstone‘ in The Paintings of Joan Mitchel, ed. Jane Livingstone, Joan Mitchell, Linda Nochlin, p. 35
1975 - 1992

Light

“It seems that the first consideration of a painter who stands before the white canvas should be to decide what curves and arabesques should cut the surface, what tints and tones should cover it... Following the precepts of Delacroix he would not begin a composition until he had first determined its organization. Guided by tradition and by science, he would adjust the composition to his conception, that is to say he would adapt the lines (directions and angles), the chiaroscuro (tones), the colors (tints), to the traits he wished to make dominant.”

Paul Signac (1863–1935) French painter

Chapt. III.; as quoted by John Rewald, in Georges Seurat', a monograph https://ia800607.us.archive.org/23/items/georges00rewa/georges00rewa.pdf; Wittenborn and Compagny, New York, 1943. p. 21 From Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism, 1899

Color, Science

“Isaac [his son, also a painter] and Liebermann had a lot of hassle with horses at the beach during the summer [in Katwijk ] and I also got a wipe of it.. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

version in original Dutch (citaat van Jozef Israëls in Nederlands): hadden van de zomer veel gedoe met paarden aan het strand [van Katwijk] en ik heb er ook een veeg van mee gekregen..
Quote from Jozef Israëls' letter to Jan Veth, 12 Nov. 1900; from RPK - collection, letters of Jozef Israëls, nr. 29
Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1871 - 1900

Horse, Summer

“Some time ago I saw a painting by Thijs Maris [= Matthijs Maris, one of the three brothers Maris, all three famous Dutch impressionist painters of the Hague School ] that reminded me of it. An old Dutch town with rows of brownish red houses with step-gables and tall flights of steps, grey roofs, and white or yellow doors, window-frames and cornices; canals with ships and a large white drawbridge, a barge with a man at the tiller going under it... Some distance away a stone bridge over the canal, with people and a cart with white horses crossing it. And everywhere movement, a porter with his wheelbarrow, a man leaning against the railing, gazing into the water, women in black with white caps... A greyish white sky over everything…”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

quote from Vincent's Letter #031 to Theo van Gogh (London, 6 April 1875) http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let031/letter.html 1870s

Women, People, School, Water

“A work of art must narrate something that does not appear within its outline. The objects and figures represented in it must likewise poetically tell you of something that is far away from them and also of what their shapes materially hide from us. A certain dog painted by Courbet (French 19th century painter) is like the story of a poetic and romantic hunt.”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

1919
as quoted in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 440
1908 - 1920, On Mystery and Creation, Paris 1913

Dogs, Art, Appearance, Painting

“A painter must compensate the natural deficiencies of his art. He has but one sentence to utter, but one moment to exhibit. He cannot, like the poet or historian, expatiate.”

Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) English painter, specialising in portraits

Discourses on Art

Art, Nature

“.. and wanting to force nature to say things, making trees twist and rocks frown, as Gustave Doré does, or even painting it like Leornardo da Vinci, that's literature too. There's logic of colour, damn it all! The painter owes allegiance to that alone. Never to the logic of the brain; if he abandons himself to that logic, he's lost... Painting is first and foremost an optical affair. The stuff of our art is there, in what our eyes are thinking... If you respect nature, it will always unravel its meaning for you.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), p. 161, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif'

Art, Literature, Nature, Thinking

“Ford is rather a sculptor of character than a painter.”

John Ford (dramatist) (1586–1639) dramatist

Algernon Charles Swinburne Essays and Studies ([1875] 1888) p. 278.
Criticism

“But American nationalism has been conditioned, to a large extent, by the "indoctrination" of the children of immigrants, inevitably coupled with a certain denigration of the Old World. Any German, or Italian, or American gentleman will naturally defend his country against patently unjust accusations—loyalty demands this; but he will not try to convince others that his nation has the highest qualities in the world, the most gifted inventors, the most profound philosophers, the best writers, the finest painters, the fastest trains, the most beautiful women. (This uncouth boasting is reserved for the traveling salesman after a third drink, or the likes of a National Socialist or a Russian Communist.)”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) Austrian noble and political theorist

Source: Leftism Revisited (1990), p. 199

Women, Children, World, Beauty

“I shall do other things, but I will always be the painter of beaches.”

Eugène Boudin (1824–1898) French painter

Quote from Boudin's letter to his brother, 1865; as cited in Boudin, Lady in white on the beach of Trouville http://www.muma-lehavre.fr/en/collections/artworks-in-context/eugene-boudin/boudin-lady-white-beach-trouville the genre of beach-painting became then an immediate success with art enthusiasts 1850s - 1870s

“I always tell the younger film-makers and students: Do it like the painters used to…Study the old masters. Enrich your palette. Expand the canvas. There's always so much more to learn.”

Martin Scorsese (1942) American film director, screenwriter, producer and actor

Scorsese: A Personal Journey through American Movies.

Study, Learning

“I made my examination in Berlin in 1915. And I must say also that Berlin was for me in another way very important. At the time there were all these new movements – 'Die Brücke'…… the 'Der Blaue Reiter', Walden of the 'Storm' Gallery. Then Kassierer who bought the Chagalls, the first Chagall's that were ever seen in Europe were there. And there was 'Die Brücke'. Rottluff, Heckel, and Kirchner. You know we saw all that. Which was good. You see, Kassierer was then the man who bought the modern French painters. He had particularly Degas who I consider still today a very good painter, one of the best. But, anyway, in spite of my teaching my art was my concern. On the little money I had collected I lived in Berlin very cheaply, ate very cheaply. And already in 1920 I saved the first salaries I received to go to Munich… So for the first time I saw the old masters, Rubens and all at the Alte Pinakothek.”

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

Homage to the square' (1964), Oral history interview with Josef Albers' (1968)

Money, Art, Way, Time

“Certain artists and critics attacked me for painting the 'Women' [series of paintings, De kooning started in 1950], but I felt that this was their problem, not mine. I don’t really feel like a non-objective painter at all... It's really absurd to make an image, like a human image. With paint, today, when you think about it, since we have this problem of doing it or not doing it. But then all of a sudden it was even more absurd not to do it. So I fear I have to follow my desires.”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

interview conducted by David Sylvester for the BBC, 1962; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York 1990, p. 45.
1960's

Women, Fear, Feeling, Problem

“There is no unity or organisation or even aesthetic unity [in Abstract Expressionism / w:New York School (art), but we do have a very strong bond in our defense, but we also are strongest in our own individual identity. Our effort, I think, is all shooting off in independent directions. And the artists themselves will not admit to the existence of the New York School. They won't admit to any classification, and most of those painters known as Abstract Expressionists are the first to say they are not.”

David Smith (1906–1965) American visual artist (1906-1965)

In an interview with w:David Sylvester (1960), edited for BBC broadcasting: first published in 'Living Arts', April 1964; as quoted in Interviews with American Artists, by David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, p. 12
1960s

School, Art, Thinking, Effort

“Just follow the lead of the Dutch seventeenth-century master-painters, we have to look at the country around us in the way the old masters did. (translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

Anton Mauve (1838–1888) Dutch painter (1838–1888)

(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Anton Mauve, in het Nederlands:) Neem toch een voorbeeld aan de Hollandse zeventiende-eeuwse meesters, we moeten kijken naar het land om ons heen zoals de oude meesters dat deden.
as cited in Anton Mauve en de Haagse School, S.F.M. de Bodt, in 'Openbaar Kunstbezit', Den Haag, 1997b, p. 30
undated quotes

Way, Country

“Oh Baudelaire... He used to be enormously important to me. It's thanks to him that I was able to get through the war [in Paris, during 1940 – 1945 Van Velde had a long and painful break, with only a few paintings he finished]. A true loyal mind without hypocrisy. The most universal spirit. The greatest Frenchman. I have always been much less interested in painters”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

than Baudelaire - a great surprise to hear for Charles Juliet the interviewer
14 September 1967; p. 66
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

Pain, War, Universe, Painting

“I would have failed, of course, but failure is the condition of the artist's life. What kind of failure would I have enjoyed, suffered? I know it was not all waste. My hopeless daubings taught me to look at the world with a painter's eye, despite the poor connection between eye and hand. And the smells of turpentine and linseed oil and paint-soaked rags still make my blood tingle. But words were my calling, and called to me, and I let fall the brush.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

My other life: John Banville http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/nov/30/my-other-life-john-banville?INTCMP=SRCH, The Observer (30 November 2008).

Life, World, Failure, Suffering

“How much
I loved the painter's glorious art, which forms
A world like, but more beautiful than this;
Just catching nature in her happiest mood!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Erinna
The Golden Violet (1827)

Love, World, Beauty, Art

“But if you want to be a painter you must go to France — France is the only school of Art.”

George Moore (novelist) (1852–1933) Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist

Source: Confessions of a Young Man http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12278/12278-h/12278-h.htm (1886), Ch. 1.

School, Art

“I'd imagine Janowicz is a fine lover - a big, bear of a man but with the hands of a miniature portrait painter.”

Ben Dirs journalist

Live - Murray v Janowicz, 2013-07-05, 2013-07-05, BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/tennis/23099746, Tennis Commentary

Imagination, Lovers

“One of my biggest heroes in music has been David Bowie. He's said, `I'm going to be a painter now, or I'm going to do some films,' and his audience is very forgiving, because they understand him as an artist. Whether you agree or like the result, you respect that he's expressing his artistic feelings.”

Maynard James Keenan (1964) musician

The Record staff (March 22, 2000) "Music News & Notes", The Record, p. Y4.

Music, Feeling, Forgiveness, Understanding

“That's one thing that's always, like, been a difference between, like, the performing arts, and being a painter, you know. A painter does a painting, and he paints it, and that's it, you know. He has the joy of creating it, it hangs on a wall, and somebody buys it, and maybe somebody buys it again, or maybe nobody buys it and it sits up in a loft somewhere until he dies. But he never, you know, nobody ever, nobody ever said to Van Gogh, 'Paint a Starry Night again, man!”

Joni Mitchell (1943) Canadian musician

You know? He painted it and that was it.
Miles of Aisles (1974)

Art, Joy, Painting, Night

“Music, for me, is a love bewitched. / Fame as a painter? / Writer, modern poet? Bad joke. / So I have no calling, and loaf.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (1899), # 67, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, translation: Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary and Max Knight; publisher, University of California Press, 1964
1895 - 1902

Love, Music

“Perhaps we shall one day find that Rembrandt is a greater painter than Raphael. I write down this blasphemy which will cause the hair of the school-men to stand on end without taking sides.”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

Quote in Delacroix's Journal of 1851; as cited in The Rise of the Cult of Rembrandt: Reinventing an Old Master in Nineteenth-Century France (2004) by Alison McQueen, p. 102
1831 - 1863

Men, School

“I believe that the great painters with their intellect as master have attempted to force this unwilling medium of paint and canvas into a record of their emotions. I find any digression from this large aim leads me to boredom.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

1911 - 1940, Notes on Painting - Edward Hopper (1933)

Painting

“Mondrian is the greatest Futurist painter of the North.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) Italian poet and editor, founder of the Futurist movement

As quoted in Abstract Painting, Michel Seuphor, Dell Publishing Co., 1964, p. 36
1910's

“He was reminded of a Dutch book whose moral he often returned to: De Schoonheid van hoogspanningslijnen in het Hollandse landschap, written by a couple of academics in Rotterdam University, Anne Kieke Backer and Arij de Boode. The Beauty of Electricity Pylons in the Dutch Landscape was a defence of the contribution of transmission engineering to the visual appeal of Holland, referencing the often ignored grandeur of the towers on their march from power stations to cities. Its particular interest for Ian, however, lay in its thesis about the history of the Dutch relationship to windmills, for it emphasised that these early industrial objects had originally been felt to have all the pylons’ threateningly alien qualities, rather than the air of enchantment and playfulness now routinely associated with them. They had been denounced from pulpits and occasionally burnt to the ground by suspicious villagers. The re-evaluation of the windmills had in large part been the work of the great painters of the Dutch Golden Age, who, moved by their country’s dependence on the rotating utilitarian objects, gave them pride of place in their canvases, taking care to throw their finest aspect into relief, like their resilience during storms and the glint of their sails in the late afternoon sun. … It would perhaps be left to artists of our own day to teach us to discern the virtues of the furniture of contemporary technology.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009), p. 212.

Books, Age, Beauty, History

“The Impressionists were the first [painters] to reject the absolute value of the subject and to consider its value to be merely relative... In Paul Cezanne's letters I notice ideas like these: 'Objects must turn, recede, and live. I wish to make something lasting from impressionism, like the art in the museums'....'For an impressionist, to paint after nature is not to paint the object, but to express sensations'....'After having looked at the old masters, one must take haste to leave them and to verify in one's self the instincts, the sensations that dwell in us.”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Quote, 1914, in 'Functions of Painting by Fernand Leger'; p. 11
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1910's, Contemporary Achievements in Painting, 1914

Art, Idea, Nature, Painting

“Albert Gleizes did not know Montmartre, had never seen anything of Picasso or Juan Gris, never heard Maurice Princet construct an infinite number of different spaces for the use of painters, but he described to me the absurdity of the museums in which mournful, extravagantly three dimensional crowds threaten to crush the visitor by jumping out of their frames.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

Cubism was born

“As a teacher I approach my students purely with the human desire to free them from all scholarly inhibitions, and I tell them, 'Painters must speak through paint — not through words.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

As quoted in It ls., No. 3 (Winter-Spring 1959)
1950s

Teachers, Painting

“Formerly I felt repulsion for these creatures, and it was a harrowing thought for me to reflect that so many of our profession, Troyon, Marchal, Meryon, Jundt, M. Maris, Monticelli [all painter-artists], and heaps more had ended like this.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, 25 May 1889; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 592), p 25 1880s, 1889

“Of all the exhibitions, Pricasso, the flamboyant painter who uses his penis as his tool of trade, drew, by far, the largest crowds.”

Pricasso (1949) Australian painter

['Pricasso' draws crowds at Sexpo, The Mercury, South Africa, 8 February 2008, 4, Independent Online, Bronwyn Gerretsen]
About

“.. for most painters nowadays [1954] examination is self-examination – this is all that we are accustomed to – while the relation to the audience is a social matter. And it is our pictures, not ourselves, that live the social life and meet the public.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

Source: 1950s, The painter and the audience' (1954), p. 106

Life

“Portrait likenesses cooked and preserved in memory, likenesses burst in the memory of Mr. Jean Dubuffet, painter.”

Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) sculptor from France

Two quotes, Jean Dubuffet placed on the poster announcing his painting-show 'Les gens sont plus beaux qu'ils croient, in Galerie René Drouin, Paris (October 7–31, 1947)
1940's

Memory, Cooking

“I thought that the painter had no right to paint so unclearly....(but) the first faint doubt as to the importance of an 'object' as the necessary element in painting.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Kandinsky is remembering his experience that he saw one of the 'Haystack' paintings of Monet, for the first time in his life, in Moscow (1895)
Source: 1916 -1920, Autobiography', 1918, p. 10

Painting

“Once again I talked with some painters, but the modern artists [in The Netherlands ] write more than they paint. If you write about art in such a way and you want to paint always with a fixed plan, then you will lose completely the deep, glorious and spontaneous art. You always have to create the new from the very deep, inside.”

Jacoba van Heemskerck (1876–1923) Dutch painter

translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(original version, written by Jacoba in German:) Ich habe wieder einige Maler gesprochen, aber die Modernen [in Nederland] schreiben mehr als sie malen. Wenn man so über Kunst schreibt und immer so mit einem festen Plan malen will, dan verliert man ganz und gar die tiefe, herrliche, spontane Kunst. Man muss so ganz tief heraus immer Neuses schaffen.
in a letter to Herwarth Walden, 23 July 1915; the 'Sturm'-Archive, Berlin
very probably Jacoba is refering here to the Dutch Stijl-artists, as Piet Mondrian and Theo v. Doesburg
1910's

Art, Way, Painting

“It seems to me that today the Surrealist crisis is the central problem in French art. It is essential for future development that this crisis should be solved… The principal error in the aesthetic program of Surrealism is that it is too literary. Painters have experimented with visions, images, dreams, but not with painting, not with color... The unpainterliness of Surrealism has inevitably produced a reaction among younger painters. [Jorn is thinking here of French painters such as Bazaine, Esteve, Lapique, Singier, Le Moal, and he suggests there should be reciprocity]... These artists cannot get any further unless they absorb the lessons of Surrealism into their painting, just as Surrealists can only advance if they adopt the painterly methods of the other group.”

Asger Jorn (1914–1973) Danish artist

Quote in a writing of Jorn on modern art in Paris, 1947; as cited on the website of the Jorn Museum. 'Articles' by Jorn http://www.museumjorn.dk/en/article_presentation.asp?AjrDcmntId=255, 1940 - 1948, Various sources

Dreams, Art, Color, Error

“The masterpiece should appear as the flower to the painter—perfect in its bud as in its bloom - with no reason to explain it's presence - no mission to fulfill - a joy to the artist, a delusion to the philanthropist - a puzzle to the botanist - an accident of sentiment and alliteration to the literary man.”

James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) American-born, British-based artist

Propositions, 2
1870 - 1903, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies' (1890)

Flowers, Appearance, Joy, Perfection

“The painters have every advantage over us today…Besides being able to tear up their failures—we never can seem to grow ivy fast enough—their materials cost them nothing. They have no committees of laymen telling them what to do. They have no deadlines, no budgets. We are all sickeningly familiar with the final cuts to our plans at the last moment. Why not take out the landscaping, the retaining walls, the colonnades? The building would be just as useful and much cheaper. True, an architect leads a hard life—for an artist.”

Philip Johnson (1906–2005) American architect

Heyer, Paul, ed. (1966). Architects on Architecture: New Directions in America, p. 279. New York: Walker and Company.

Life, Failure, Tear

“I paint very large pictures. I realize that historically the function of painting large pictures is painting something very grandiose and pompous. The reason I paint them however, - I think it applies to other painters I know -, is precisely because I want to be very intimate and human. To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with a reducing glass. However you paint the larger picture, you are in it. It isn't something you command.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

1950's
Source: Interiors, Vol. 110, no 10, May 1951; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 172

Thinking, Painting

“You have long known what I have tried to establish: the right to dare everything; yet the difficulty I have had finding enough money to live on has been too great, and my capacities have not produced a very big result but the mechanism has got underway nevertheless. The public does not owe me anything because the pictorial work I have done is only relatively good, but the painters who benefit from that freedom today do owe me something.”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

Source: 1890s - 1910s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), p. 214: in a letter to George-Daniel de Monfreid, Marquesas Islands, October 1902

Money, Freedom

“[about Ad Reinhardt:].. we supported each other... He thought I was a good painter, and I thought he was a good painter.”

Agnes Martin (1912–2004) American artist

1980 - 2000, Perfection Is in the Mind', 1995

Support

“The poet and the painter are only truly great by the mutual influences of their studies, and the jealousy of glory has only produced an idle contest.”

Isaac D'Israeli (1766–1848) British writer

Source: The Literary Character, Illustrated by the History of Men of Genius (1795–1822), Ch. III.

Jealousy, Study

“Yesterday I received a letter from my father [ Dutch landscape-painter J. W. Bilders. ] He told me to come at once, to paint the goats in a rather large forest landscape-painting he just finished, which has to be sent away at once [to Saint Petersburg, Russia]. I earn back my travelling [from Leiden to Amsterdam, probably by travel coach] but will loose one day studying in open air. When my goats will succeed, and they are not too stubborn, I'll be back here [in Leiden] tomorrow at one o'clock in the afternoon.”

Gerard Bilders (1838–1865) painter from the Netherlands

Source: 1850's, Vrolijk Versterven' (from Bilders' diary & letters), p. 30 - quote of Bilder's letter to Johannes Kneppelhout, from Leiden, August 1859

Travel, Study, Painting

“Architects and painters know precisely what they are about as long as they deal with material phenomena. … But when they come to the aesthetics of their work, when they aim at a particular effect on the mind or on the senses, the rules dissolve into nothing but vague ideas.”

Carl von Clausewitz book On War

On War (1832), Book 2

Idea, Sense

“When I came back to Paris in 1931, after a long convalescence in the South, the 'Abstraction-Création' group had just be founded. Vantongerloo had been given our mailing list. At the same time I learned of Van Doesburg's death in Davos. The first issue of 'Abstraction-Création' came off the press just a year later, printed in the same dusty small shop that had brought out 'Cercle et Carré' and where I had earned a meagre living as a non-union proof-reader and make-up man. 'Abstraction-Création' had a much wider influence than its predecessor. From 1932 to 1936 an annual cahier presented reproductions and statements by painters.”

Michel Seuphor (1901–1999) designer, draughtsman, painter

Source: Abstract Painting (1964), pp. 100-101

Death, Learning, Time

“I met him Kandinsky shortly after my return to Germany from the United Sates. At first, I lived for a while in Bonn... A year later, in 1901, I decided to move to Munich, but still found very little encouragement as an artist. German painters refused to believe that a woman could have real talent, and I was even denied access, as a student, to the Munich Academy... It is significant that the first Munich artist who took the trouble to encourage me was Kandinsky, himself no German but a recent arrival from Russia.”

Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) German painter

Source: Interview by Edouard Roditi (1958), p. 115-116

“Don't you love it when people in school are like, "I'm a bad test taker?" You mean, you're stupid. Oh, you struggle with that part where we find out what you know? Oh. No, no, I can totally relate. See, because I'm a brilliant painter, minus my God-awful brushstrokes. Oh, how the masterpiece is crystal up here[points to head], but once paint hits canvas, I develop Parkinson's. I apologize if there's a Parkinson's painter in the audience. I assume your best work is in the A. M. Probably gets a bit abstract by noon.”

Daniel Tosh (1975) American stand-up comedian

Happy Thoughts (2011)

Love, God, People, Stupidity

“Before, the wire studies were subjective, portraits, caricatures, stylized representations of beasts and humans. But these recent things have been viewed from a more objective angle and although their present size is diminutive, I feel that there is no limitation to the scale to which they can be enlarged... One of the canons of the futuristic painters, as propounded by Modigliani, was that objects behind other objects should not be lost to view, but should be shown through the others by making the latter transparent. The wire sculpture accomplishes this in a most decided manner.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

1920s, Statement on Wire Sculpture' (1929)

Feeling, Study

“The bleak and yet so intimate nature of the mountains has had an enormous impact on the painter. It has deepened his love for his subjects and at the same time purged his vision of everything that is secondary. Nothing inessential appears in the paintings, but how delicately every detail is worked out! The creative thought emerges strongly and nakedly from the finished work. Kirchner is now so taken up with entirely new problems that one cannot apply the old criteria to him if one is to do justice to his work. Those who wish to classify him on the strength of his German paintings will be both disappointed and surprised. Far from destroying him, his serious illness has matured him. Besides his work on visible life, creativity stemming solely from the imagination has opened up its vast potential to him – for this the brief span of his life will probably be far from sufficient.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

Quote from the 'Preface' of the catalog of Kirchner's Frankfurt exhibition in 1922, (written by Kirchner, about Kirchner under his pseudonym de:Louis de Marsalle); as quoted in the biography-pdf http://www.kirchnermuseum.ch/data/media/downloads/Biography.pdf of the Kirchner museum, Davos 1920's

Love, Life, Justice, Disappointment

“The organizer who creates roles, who creates the holes that will force the pegs to their shape, is a prime creator of personality itself. When we ask of a man, "What is he?" the answer is usually given in terms of his major role, job, or position in society; he is the place that he fills, a painter, a priest, a politician, a criminal.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1950s, The Organizational Revolution: A study in the ethics of economic organization, 1953, p. 80, quoted in: Paul S. Adler eds. (2009) The Oxford Handbook of Sociology and Organization Studies: Classical Foundations. p. 552

Personality

“Do you know what I really need to make a well-finished painting? 2 years at Gérome or somebody like him, working in the studio.... because that is the only way to become a good painter. That whole business.. then a small watercolour than a little painting and finally when I have earned so much that I could study, I have become too old and too miserable.”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) Weet U wat ik nodig heb om een goed afgewerkt schilderij te maken? 2 jaar bij Gérome of zoo iemand op 't atelier te werken.. ..want dat is de enige manier om een goed schilder te worden. Dat gewurm, dan een aquarelletje dan een schilderijtje en eindelijk als ik daardoor zo veel verdiend heb dat ik zou kunnen studeeren ben ik te oud en te beroerd geworden.
In his letter to A.P. van Stolk, nr. 51, c. 1884; RKD-Archive, The Hague; as cited in master-thesis Van Gogh en Breitner in Den Haag, Helewise Berger, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, p. 29
Breitner responds to accusations from his Maecenas that he refused to learn from well-known Dutch painters how to finish his paintings well. In 1884 already Breitner started in the studio of Cormon in Paris
before 1890

Way, Business, Study, Painting

“.. The Night-watch (large and famous painting of Dutch 17th century painter Rembrandt.... the grandiose - I don't say it in bad part - grows tiresome after a while. There are mountains like that; when you stand before them you shout Nom de Dieu, but for every day a simple little hill does well enough. Listen Monsieur Vollard, if the 'Raft of the Medusa' of Théodore Géricault hung in my bedroom, it would make me sick.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Quote from a conversation with Vollard, in the studio of Cézanne, in Aix, 1896; as quoted in Cezanne, by Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 67
Quotes of Paul Cezanne, 1880s - 1890s

Mountain, Parting, Painting

“I have thought a lot about the question of titles. I must confess that I find any for works that take off from an arbitrary starting point and end with something real…. [Miro allowed Pierre Matisse to make titles, based on the] real things…. [if they do] not evoke some tendency or other, something I want to avoid completely [very probably Miro meant here: the Surrealists ]. [advising Pierre Matisse; who showed then several modern European painters in New York].”

Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist

In a letter to his art-seller Pierre Matisse, 12 October 1934; as quoted in Calder Miro, ed. Elizabeth Hutton Turner / Oliver Wick; Philip Wilson Publishers, London 2004, p. 82, note 24
1915 - 1940

Question

“We are observing ourselves being observed by the painter, and made visible to his eyes by the same light that enables us to see him. And just as we are about to apprehend ourselves, transcribed by his hand as though in a mirror, we find that we can in fact apprehend nothing of that mirror but its lusterless back. The other side of a psyche.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Las Menias
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1970)

Light

“Expression for me does not reside in passions glowing in a human face or manifested by violent movement. The entire arrangement of my picture is expressive; the place occupied by my figures, the empty space around them, the proportions, everything has its share. Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the diverse elements at the painter's command to express his feelings. In a picture every part will be visible and will play its appointed role, whether it be principal or secondary. Everything that is not useful in the picture is, it follows, harmful. A work of art must be harmonious in its entirety: any superfluous detail would replace some other essential detail in the mind of the spectator.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

1905 - 1910, Notes of a Painter' (1908)

Art, Feeling, Passion, Parting

“Colour, as the strange and magnificent expression of the inscrutable spectrum of Eternity, is beautiful and important to me as a painter; I use it to enrich the canvas and to probe more deeply into the object. Colour also decided, to a certain extent, my spiritual outlook, but it is subordinated to life, and above all, to the treatment of form. Too much emphasis on colour at the expense of form and space would make a double manifestation of itself on the canvas, and this would verge on craft work.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

Source: 1930s, On my Painting (1938), pp. 18-19

Life, Beauty

“Literature is the noblest of all the arts. Music dies on the air, or at best exists only as a memory; oratory ceases with the effort; the painter's colors fade and the canvas rots; the marble is dragged from its pedestal and is broken into fragments.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Source: The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927), p. 170.

Art, Music, Color, Literature

“At an exhibition in London, one sagacious critic wrote: 'Monsieur Degas seems a good pupil of Nittis!' Doesn't this reflect that mania which men of letters have for squabbling in court over who had a given idea first? And the mania spreads to painters who take great care of their originality.”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

Source: 1890s - 1910s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), p. 219: quote in 1898

Men, Idea

“In so far as it is concerned with truth that goes beyond appearance and form, art is transcendental. The consciousness of this is often a snare for the painter who is led by a false preoccupation with some literary or intellectual conception of reality into a time-conscious literary form. Nano Reid realised with the instinct of a painter that for her the whole truth existed in the head, the body, the structure of life: it lay there revealed in the form, the line, a timeless and profound reality.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

Nano Reid (1950)

Life, Truth, Art, Reality

“The excuse that the painters were documenting reality was becoming ridiculous. Photographers and film makers went far beyond them. Already it could be said that a good portrait led one to think about the painter not the model.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

Cubism was born

Thinking, Reality

“I mean that the things I felt and that I enjoyed about certain painters of the past that I liked, that inspired me, like Cézanne and Manet, that thing I enjoyed in their work, that complete losing of oneself in the work to such an extent that the work itself, even though it was a picture of a woman in front of a mirror or some dead fish on the table, the pictures of those men were no pictures to me. They felt as if a living organism was posited there on the canvas, on this surface. That's truly to me the act of creation.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

Source: 1961 - 1980, transcript of a public forum at Boston university', conducted by Joseph Ablow 1966, p. 66

Men, Fish, Past, Dead

“At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act-rather than as a space in which to reproduce, re-design, analyze or express an object, actual or imagined. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event.”

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

"The American Action Painters" (1952) in Art News 51/8, Dec. 1952, p. 22; then published in Tradition of the New, 1959.

Imagination, Appearance

“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

Truth, Secret, School, Faith

“To draw and paint is an elementary thing, it has to be done. But it can be a mental process, intellectual process, thought process. *It is a question of temperament of each artist, there are abstract painters, figurative painters, painters who work in silence or who don’t want to work at all, but they continue with ideas in their mind and in their soul. It’s very fascinating; it’s a vast area without rules or regulations.”

S. H. Raza (1922–2016) Indian artist

Culture:S.H. Raza Comes in Full Circle

Soul, Idea, Question, Silence

“An artistic atmosphere does not create artists a literary atmosphere does not create literators; poets and painters spring up where there was never a verse made or a picture seen. This suggests that God is no more idle now than He was at the beginning, but that He is still and forever shaping the human chaos into the instruments and means of beauty.”

William Dean Howells (1837–1920) author, critic and playwright from the United States

My Literary Passions (1895)

God, Beauty, Spring

“A great portrait is always more a portrait of the painter than of the painted.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Portraits
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books

Painting

“The big artist does not sit down monkey like & copy a coal scuttle or an ugly old woman like some Dutch painters have done nor a dungpile, but he keeps a sharp eye on Nature & steals her tools. He learns what she does with light the big tool & then colour then form and appropriates them to his own use. Then he's got a canoe of his own smaller than Nature's but big enough for every purpose except to paint the midday sun which is not beautiful at all. It is plenty strong enough though to make midday sunlight or the setting sun if you know how to handle it. With this canoe he can sail parallel to Nature's sailing. He will soon be sailing only where he wants to selecting nice little coves & shady shores or storms to his own liking, but if ever he thinks he can sail another fashion from Nature or make a better shaped boat he'll capsize or stick in the mud & nobody will buy his pictures or sail with him in his old tub.”

Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) American painter

Letter to Benjamin Eakins (1868-03-03).

Beauty, Fashion, Nature, Thinking

“.. an entirely original painter [ Francois Millet ], high-minded and genuinely rustic in nature, who has expressed things about the country and its inhabitants, about their toil, their melancholy, and the nobleness of their labour. He has represented them in a somewhat barbaric fashion, in a manner to which his ideas gave a more expressive force than his hand possessed. The world has been grateful for his intentions; it has recognised in his methods something of the sensibility of a Burns who was a little awkward in expression.... He stands out as a deep thinker.”

Eugène Fromentin (1820–1876) French painter

Quote from Maitres d'Autrefois; Belgique – Hollande, Eugène Fromentin; Librairie Plon-Nourrit et Cie, Paris, 1877; as quoted by Arthur Hoebert, in The Barbizon Painters – being the story of the Men of thirty – associate of the National Academy of Design; publishers, Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York 1915, p. 73-74

World, Idea, Fashion, Nature

“In the early days the Cubists' method of grasping an object was to go round and round it; the futurists declared that one had to get inside it. In my opinion the two views can be reconciled in a poetic cognition of the world. But to the very fact that they appealed to the creative depths in the painter by awakening in him hidden forces which were intuitive and vitalizing, the Futurist theories did more than the Cubist principles to open up unexplored and boundless horizons.”

Gino Severini (1883–1966) Italian painter

Source: The Life of a Painter - autobiography', 1946, Letters of the great artists', 1963, p. 248

World

“What motive had a Dutch painter in painting a picture? None. And notice that he never asked for one. A peasant with a drunken red nose looks at you with his heavy eye and laughs with open mouth showing his teeth, raising a jug; if it is well painted, it has its value.”

Eugène Fromentin (1820–1876) French painter

Quote from Les Maitres d'Autrefois / The Old Masters, 1876; 1948, p. 115; as cited in 'Dutch Painting of the Golden Age', http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/dutch-painting-the-golden-age/content-section-2 OpenLearn

Motivation, Painting

“Expression, child of soul! I fondly trace
Thy strong enchantment, when the poet's lyre,
The painter's pencil cathch thy sacred fire,
And beauty wakes for thee her touching grace”

Helen Maria Williams (1759–1827) British writer

From 'Sonnet - to Expression', Poems 1786, kindle ebook ASIN B00849523Q

Beauty, Soul, Strong

“Light and air, that's art! I can never give enough light in my paintings, especially in the skies. The air in a painting, that is really a thing! It is the main thing! Air and light are the great magicians. It is the sky which prescribes the painting. Painters never look enough at the sky. We must get it from above. (translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch (1824–1903) Dutch painter of the Hague School (1824-1903)

version in original Dutch / citaat van J. H. Weissenbruch, in het Nederlands: Licht en lucht, dat is de kunst! Ik kan in m'n schilderijen, vooral in de luchten, nooit licht genoeg brengen.. .De lucht op een schilderij, dat is een ding! Een hoofdzaak! Lucht en licht zijn de groote toovenaars. De lucht bepaalt het schilderij. Schilders kunnen nooit genoeg naar de lucht kijken. Wij moeten het van boven hebben.
Quote of J. H. Weissenbruch; as cited in J.H. Weissenbruch 1824-1903, ed. E. Jacobs, H. Janssen & M. van Heteren; exposition-catalog, Museum Jan Cunen / Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Zwolle 1999, pp. 227-233

Art, Light, Painting

“I have made the complete return [from imagination] to nature, and nature is, as we all know, primarily an intellectual idea. I am satisfied that painting also is like nature, an intellectual idea, and that the laws of nature as presented to the mind through the eye and the eye is the painter's first and last vehicle are the means of transport to the real mode of thought: the only legitimate source of aesthetic experience for the intelligent painter.”

Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) American artist

n.p.
1921 - 1930, Art and the Personal Life', Marsden Hartley, 1928

Law, Imagination, Intelligence, Idea

“[Concerning all painters] working in what is known as the abstract style: [the abstract form] is a living thing…. a carrier of the awesome feelings he felt before the unknowable [common quote of Barnett Newman, Clifford Still, and Mark Rothko, 1947]”

Barnett Newman (1905–1970) American artist

1940 - 1950
Source: the catalogue of the 'Ideographic Picture' show, New York, 1947

Feeling, Quotes

“If, therefore, you've already considered that Signac and the others who are doing pointillism often make very beautiful things with it - Instead of running those things down, one [Bernhard] should respect them and speak of them sympathetically, especially when there's a falling out. Otherwise one becomes a narrow sectarian oneself, and the equivalent of those who think nothing of others and believe themselves to be the only righteous ones. This extends even to the academic painters, because take, for example, a painting by Fantin-Latour — and above all his entire oeuvre. Well then — there's someone who hasn't rebelled, and does that prevent him, that indefinable calm and righteousness that he has, from being one of the most independent characters in existence?”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in Vincent's letter to Emile Bernard, from Paris, about December 1887; from letter 575 - vangoghletters http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let575/letter.html] 1880s, 1887

Beauty, Thinking, Painting

“After the war [1918] etching became Kirchner's favorite medium. He attributed this to its responsiveness. 'Etchings', he wrote, 'develop in the first states the most immediate hieroglyphs. Rich in lively handwriting and rich in variety of motifs, the etchings are like a diary of the painter.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

de:Louis de Marsalle, in Uber Kirchners Graphik, Genius 3, no. 2 (1921), p. 258; as quoted in 'The Revival of Printmaking in Germany', I. K. Rigby; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 53
1920's

War

“Whenever I become discouraged (which is on alternate Tuesdays, between three and four) I lift my spirits by remembering: The artists are on our side! I mean those poets and painters, singers and musicians, novelists and playwrights who speak to the world in a way that is impervious to assault because they wage the battle for justice in a sphere which is unreachable by the dullness of ordinary political discourse.”

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian

" Artists of Resistance http://books.google.ca/books?id=qMYNNGiHQ0kC&pg=PT52&lpg=PT52#v=onepage&q&f=false", July 2001

World, Justice, Way

“Peintre Paysagiste des Polders Hollandais', ('Landscape Painter of the Dutch Polders')”

Paul Gabriël (1828–1903) painter (1828-1903)

in, 'Paul Joseph Constantin Gabriël 1828-1903. Colorist van de Haagse School', ed. M. Peters & B. Tempel; exposition catalog - Dordrecht, Dordrechts Museum / Kleef, Stichting B.C. Koekkoek-Huis, Zwolle 1998, p. 46
Paul Gabriël described himself frequently in this way, in French!
undated quotes

“A soft and blue Italian sky, — the blue
That painters and that poets love, — the blue
The lover worships in the maiden's eyes,
Whose beauty is their power and spell.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The London Literary Gazette, 1823

Love, Beauty, Lovers

“You can't prove Rembrandt is better than Norman Rockwell - although if you actually do prefer Rockwell, I'd say you were shunning complexity, were secretly conservative, and hadn't really looked at either painter's work. Taste is a blood sport.”

Jerry Saltz (1951) American art historian

Source: " Has Money Ruined Art? http://nymag.com/arts/art/season2007/38981/," nymag.com, 2007

Sport

“writers without books, poets without verses, painters without pictures p198”

Fernando Sabino (1923–2004) Brazilian writer

Books

“He [ Jan Toorop, an older and famous Dutch religious painter] sees the Catholic faith as A. Besant, [a British Theosophiste and women's right activiste, then] views it in its primeval period: the Catholic religion as it was originally, is the same as Theosophy, is it not? I remained broadly in agreement with Toorop, and I could tell that he goes to the depths, and that he is searching for the spiritual.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote in Mondrian's letter to Cornelis Spoor, Domburg October 1910; Van Ginneken and Joosten, op. cit. (note 26), pp. 263; as cited in Mondrian, - The Art of Destruction, Carel Blotkamp, Reaktion Books LTD. London 2001, p. 47
1910's

Women, Faith, Religion, Search

“If America is to produce great painters and if young artists wish to assume a place in the history of the art of their country, their first desire should be to remain in America to peer deeper into the heart of American life, rather than spend their time abroad obtaining a superficial view of the art of the Old World. In the days when I studied abroad conditions were entirely different. The facilities for study in this country were meagre. There were even no life classes in our art schools and schools of painting. Naturally one had to seek instruction elsewhere, abroad. Today we need not do that.”

Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) American painter

Interview, Philadelphia Press; quoted in Lloyd Goodrich, Thomas Eakins (1933).

Life, World, School, Art

“I didn't become a French painter or a European one. I remained an Indian painter through the years. That was always in my heart and I am very glad that I was able to come back here again.”

S. H. Raza (1922–2016) Indian artist

This is a sum of all my experiences: SH Raza

Heart

“A bullfighter can never see the work of art that he is making. He has no chance to correct it as a painter or writer has. He cannot hear it as a musician can. He can only feel it and hear the crowd's reaction to it. When he feels it and knows that it is great it takes hold of him so that nothing else in the world matters. All the time that he is making his work of art he knows that he must keep within the limits of his skill and his knowledge of the animal. Those matadors are called cold who visibly show that they are thinking of this. Antonio was not cold and the public belonged to him now. He looked up at them and let them know, modestly but not humbly, that he knew it and as he circled the ring with the ear in his hand he looked at the different segments of Bilbao, a city that he loved, as they stood up as he passed and was happy that he owned them.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Source: The Dangerous Summer (1985), Ch. 13

Love, Happiness, World, Art

“Then - being in two minds - in my father's courtyard, I counted the buttons of my coat: soldier or painter, soldier, painter, soldier, painter.... the last button told me: painter. So it was decided by chance that I would become a painter”

Johannes Warnardus Bilders (1811–1890) painter from the Northern Netherlands

c. 1831
version in original Dutch (citaat van Johannes Warnardus Bilders, in Nederlands): Toen telde ik, op de binnenplaats mijns vaders in tweestrijd, de knoopen van mijn jas: soldaat of schilder, soldaat, schilder, soldaat, schilder.. ..de laatste knoop zei schilder, en zoo besliste het toeval, dat ik schilder zou worden [c. 1831].
J.W. Bilders was fighting as a Dutch volunteer in the Belgium Independents War against The Netherlands. 1830
Source: 1880's, Johannes Warnardus Bilders' (1887/1900), p. 78

Chance

“Words are powerless to tell. —
Such the image in my heart, —
Painter, try thy glorious art!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(16th November 1822) Fragments in Rhyme III: Outline for a Portrait
23rd November 1822) Fragments in Rhyme IV: Arion see The Improvisatrice (1824
The London Literary Gazette, 1821-1822

Art, Heart

“Don't underestimate the influence of the Surrealist state of mind on the young American painters [like his artist-friends William Baziotes and w:Roberto Matta in those days.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

Abstract Painting, Thomas Hess, New York, Viking 1951, p. 132
1950s

“A painter can leave you with nothing left to say. A writer leaves you with everything to say.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Georg Christoph Lichtenberg', p. 405
Essays and reviews, Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time (2007)

“You may know a good painter by his habit of work: a good painter works constantly.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

The Artist Speaks (1951)

“As a schoolboy drawing-lessons became my favorite, and that pleasure was not ignited a little when, by the time of my twelfth year, the cityscape-painter B. J. van Hove became our neighbor. Since then I began to long for the moment that I would be allowed to change the school bench for a place in his studio. That desire was already satisfied in the autumn of [18]31.”

Johannes Bosboom (1817–1891) Dutch painter

origineel citaat van Johannes Bosboom, in Nederlands: Als schoolknaap was de teekenles mij de liefste geworden en die lust werd niet weinig aangewakkerd, toen, omstreeks mijn twaalfde jaar, de stadsgezichtschilder B. J. van Hove onze buurman werd. Sinds dien tijd begon ik sterk te verlangen naar het oogenblik, waarop ik de schoolbank tegen een plaatsje in zijn atelier zou mogen verwisselen. Dat verlangen werd reeds bevredigd in het najaar van [18]31.
Source: 1880's, Een en ander betrekkelijk mijn loopbaan als schilder, p. 7

Pleasure, School, Autumn, Change

“The final test of painting, theirs, mine, any other, is; does the painter’s emotion comes across?.... Procedure is the keyword.... The difference is that we don't begin with a definite sense of procedure. It's free association from the start to the finished state. The old idea was to make use of your talent. This, we feel, is often to take the line of least resistance.... painters like Rothko, Pollock, Still, perhaps in reaction to the tendency to analyze which has dominated painting from Seurat to Albers, associate with very little analysis. A new form of expressionism inevitably followed. With De Kooning the procedure is continual change, and the immediacy of the change. With Jackson, it's the confidence you feel from the concentration of his energy in a given picture..”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

1958
Quote from Kline, in Conversations with Artists, Seldon Rothman, New York Capricorn Books, 1961, p. 106 - 109: Talk ing about the Abstract expressionists
1960's

Feeling, Confidence, Idea, Sense

“Don't you think your Corot [to Guilemet the painter] is a little short on temperament? I'm painting a portrait of Vallabreque; the highlight on the nose is pure vermilion”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

remark of Cezanne ca. 1860
Quote in: Cézanne, by Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 28
Quotes of Paul Cezanne, 1860s - 1870s

Thinking, Painting

“I recommend [the students] that you should work actively at the Hermitage and study the artistic structures of Rubens, Rembrandt, Titian, Watteau, Poussin, and other painters, even Chardin, where he is an artist. Study very closely their dabbing manner of execution and try to copy a small piece of canvas, just one square inch.”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

Quote in a letter of Malevich to his student Yudin, summer of 1924; as quoted in Marc Chagall – the Russian years 1906 – 1922, ed. By Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, p. 66
1921 - 1930

Study

Quotes about painter page 4

Quotes about painter
page 4