Quotes by Painters - Page 23

I don't want my work to be an exposure of my feelings.
Jasper Johns
Without atmosphere a painting is nothing.
Rembrandt
When nations grow old the Arts grow coldAnd commerce settles on every tree
William Blake
I'm not an abstractionist. I'm not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.
Mark Rothko
Art does not reproduce what we see. It makes us see.
Paul Klee
A Curve does not exist in its full power until contrasted with a straight line.
Robert Henri
Remember, light and shadow never stand still.
Benjamin West
When the artist finds himself he is lost. The fact that he has succeeded in never finding himself is regarded by Max Ernst as his only lasting achievement.
Max Ernst
A tree growing out of the ground is as wonderful today as it ever was. It does not need to adopt new and startling methods.
Robert Henri
A common defect of modern art study is that too many students do not know why they draw.
Robert Henri
Genius is not a possession of the limited few, but exists in some degree in everyone. Where there is natural growth, a full and free play of faculties, genius will manifest itself.
Robert Henri
The modern artist is working with space and time and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating.
Jackson Pollock
What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who only has eyes, if he is a painter, or ears if he is a musician, or a lyre in every chamber of his heart if he is a poet, or even, if he is a boxer, just his muscles? Far from it: at the same time he is also a political being, constantly aware of the heartbreaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. How could it be possible to feel no interest in other people, and with a cool indifference to detach yourself from the very life which they bring to you so abundantly? No, painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.
Pablo Picasso
Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world.
Edward Hopper
There is no art without contemplation.
Robert Henri
Color is only beautiful when it means something.
Robert Henri
Whatever the source of emotion that drives me to create, I want to give it a form which has some connection with the visible world, even if it is only to wage war on that world....I want my paintings to be able to defend themselves to resist the invader, just as though there were razor blades on all surfaces so no one could touch them without cutting his hands.
Pablo Picasso
I hope to depart in no other way than looking back with love and wistfulness and thinking, oh paintings that I would have made..
Vincent van Gogh
It is really a matter of ending this silence and solitude, of breathing and stretching one's arms again.
Mark Rothko
A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.
Paul Cézanne
I want to be famous but unknown!
Edgar Degas
Art is vice. You don't wed it, you rape it.
Edgar Degas
The world doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?
Pablo Picasso
All real works of art look as though they were done in joy.
Robert Henri
Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.
Pablo Picasso
Art is, after all, only a trace – like a footprint which shows that one has walked bravely and in great happiness.
Robert Henri
The greatest artist does not have any conceptWhich a single piece of marble does not itself containWithin its excess, though onlyA hand that obeys the intellect can discover it.
Michelangelo Buonarroti
I have things in my head that are not like what anyone taught me — shapes and ideas so near to me, so natural to my way of being and thinking.
Georgia O'Keeffe
It is necessary to keep one's compass in one's eyes and not in the hand, for the hands execute, but the eye judges.
Michelangelo Buonarroti
We feel lonely now and then and long for friends and think we should be quite different and happier if we found a friend of whom we might say: “He is the one.” But you, too, will begin to learn that there is much self-deception behind this longing; if we yielded too much to it, it would lead us from the road.
Vincent van Gogh
Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist
René Magritte
If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.
Edward Hopper
Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction." ― Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.
Eugène Delacroix
Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world, though we can't explain them. People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.
Pablo Picasso
Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.
Vincent van Gogh
I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way... things I had no words for.
Georgia O'Keeffe
Whoever uses the spirit that isin him creatively is an artist. Tomake living itself an art, that isthe goal.
Henry Miller
Don't worry about your originality. You couldn't get rid of it even if you wanted to. It will stick with you and show up for better or worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do.
Robert Henri
Art is either revolution or plagiarism
Paul Gauguin
The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.
Robert Henri
Do whatever you do intensely.
Robert Henri
If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.
Pablo Picasso
A line is a dot that went for a walk.
Paul Klee
When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.
Pablo Picasso
My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece
Claude Monet
Give me a museum and I'll fill it.
Pablo Picasso
There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.
Pablo Picasso
Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.
Claude Monet
What do you think an artist is? ...he is a political being, constantly aware of the heart breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.
Pablo Picasso
The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.
Pablo Picasso
Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
Pablo Picasso
Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.
Edgar Degas
Creativity takes courage.
Henri Matisse
One eye sees, the other feels.
Paul Klee
Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone
Pablo Picasso
When I was a child my mother said to me, 'If you become a soldier, you'll be a general. If you become a monk, you'll be the pope.' Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.
Pablo Picasso
There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun
Pablo Picasso
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
Pablo Picasso
Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye... it also includes the inner pictures of the soul.
Edvard Munch