Quote collection
437 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Painting isn't a question of sensibility; it's a matter of seizing the power, taking over from nature, not expecting her to supply you with information and good advice."
"When I enter the studio, I leave my body at the door the way the Moslems leave their shoes when they enter the mosque, and I only allow my spirit to go in there and paint."
"In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt."
"It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child."
"Titian, Rembrandt and Goya were the great painters. I am only a public clown."
"One must act in painting as in life, directly."
"It's a poor artist who borrows--a good artist steals."
"I do things I don't know how to do in order to learn how to do them."
"In every photographer there was a painter, a true artist, awaiting expression."
"If you know exactly what you're going to do, what's the good in doing it?"
"Art is an instrument in the war against the enemy."
"The academic teaching on beauty is false. We have been misled, but so completely misled that we can no longer find so much as a shadow of a truth again. The beauties of the Parthenon, the Venuses, the Nymphs, the Narcisusses, are so may lies. Art is not the application of a canon of beauty, but what the instinct and the brain can conceive independently of that canon."
"I don't own any of my own paintings because a Picasso original costs several thousand dollars and that's a luxury I cannot afford."
"If I paint a hammer and sickle people may think it is a representation of Communism, but for me it is only a hammer and sickle. I just want to reproduce the objects for what they are, not for what they mean."
"Drawing is a kind of hypnotism: one looks in such a way at the model, that he comes and takes a seat on the paper."
"All things considered, there is only Matisse."
"To draw you must close your eyes and sing."
"Art is a leap into the dark."
"People who read are people who dream."
"What does it mean for a painter to paint in the manner of So-and-So or to actually imitate someone else? What's wrong with that? On the contrary, it's a good idea. You should constantly try to paint like someone else. But the thing is, you can't! You would like to. You try. But it turns out to be a botch... And it's at the very moment you make a botch of it that you're yourself."