Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
A picture is first of all a product of the artist's imagination, it must never be a copy.
C'est vrai. Voilá quelqu'un qui sent comme moi. (It is true. There is someone who feels as I do).
The frame is the pimp of painting; it enhances it, but it must never shine at the painting's expense.
What is certain is that setting a piece of nature in place and drawing it are two very different things.
It seems to me that today if the artist wishes to be serious... he must once more sink himself in solitude.
A picture is an artificial work, outside nature. It calls for as much cunning as the commission of a crime.
No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters.
the moods of sadness that come over anyone who takes up art... these dismal moods have very little compensation.
Conversation in real life is full of half-finished sentences and overlapping talk. Why shouldn't painting be too?
What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming.
A man is an artist only at certain moments, by an effort of will. Objects have the same appearance for everybody.
Women can never forgive me; they hate me, they feel that I am disarming them. I show them without their coquetry.
The secret is to follow the advice the masters give you in their works while doing something different from them.
Your pictures would have been finished a long time ago if I were not forced every day to do something to earn money.
I really have a lot of stuff in my head; if only there were insurance companies for that as there are for so many things.
It is people's movement that consoles us. If the leaves of a tree did not move, how sad would be the tree - and so should we.
One must do the same subject over again ten times, a hundred times. In art nothing must resemble an accident, not even movement.
For those who don't know what they are doing, painting is easy. For those who do know what they are doing, painting is difficult.
There is no such thing as Intelligence; one has intelligence of this or that. One must have intelligence only for what one is doing.
You have to have a high conception, not of what you are doing, but of what you may do one day: without that, there's no point in working.
Make portraits of people in typical, familiar poses, being sure above all to give their faces the same kind of expression as their bodies.
I would have been in mortal misery all my life for fear my wife might say, "That's a pretty little thing," after I had finished a picture.
Art' is the same word as 'artifice,' that is to say, something deceitful. It must succeed in giving the impression of nature by false means.
Drawing is the artist's most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality.
Do portraits of people in familiar and typical attitudes, above all give to their face the same choice of expression that one gives to their body.
A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people.
I frequently lock myself in my studio. I do not often see the people I love, and in the end I shall suffer for it... painting is one's private life.
And even this heart of mine has something artificial. The dancers have sewn it into a bag of pink satin, pink satin slightly faded, like their dancing shoes.
Work a great deal at evening effects, lamplight, candlelight, etc. The intriguing thing is not to show the source of the light but the effect of the lighting.
A picture is a thing which requires as much knavery, as much malice, and as much vice as the perpetration of a crime. Make it untrue and add an accent of truth.
People call me the painter of dancing girls. It has never occurred to them that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering movement and painting pretty clothes.
One reproduces only that which is striking; that is to say, the necessary. Thus, one's recollections and inventions are liberated from the tyranny which nature exerts.
You must aim high, not in what you are going to do at some future date, but in what you are going to make yourself do to-day. Otherwise, working is just a waste of time.
It requires courage to make a frontal attack on nature through the broad planes and the large lines and it is cowardly to do it by the facets and details. It is a battle.
These women of mine are decent, simple human beings who have no other concern than that of their physical condition... it is as though one were watching through a keyhole.
Once they witnessed one of his painting sold at auction for $100,000. And asked how you do it, he said, 'I feel as a horse must feel when the beautiful cup is given to the jockey.'
It is all very well to copy what one sees, but it is far better to draw what one now only sees in one's memory. That is a transformation in which imagination collaborates with memory.
One must have a high opinion of a work of art - not the work one is creating at the moment, but of that which one desires to achieve one day. Without this it is not worthwhile working.
I felt so insufficiently equipped, so unprepared, so weak, and at the same time it seemed to me that my reflections on art were correct. I quarreled with all the world and with myself.
Only two of my personalities are schizophrenic, but one of them is paranoid and the other one is out to get him. Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.
The museums are here to teach the history of art and something more as well, for, if they stimulate in the weak a desire to imitate, they furnish the strong with the means of their emancipation.
A painting is above all a product of the artist's imagination, it must never be a copy. If, at a later stage, he wants to add two or three touches from nature, of course it doesn't spoil anything.
I always urged my contemporaries to look for interest and inspiration to the development and study of drawing, but they would not listen. They thought the road to salvation lay by the way of colour.
What use is my mind? Granted that it enables me to hail a bus and to pay my fare. But once I am inside my studio, what use is my mind? I have my model, my pencil, my paints. My mind doesn't interest me.
I put it [picture "A still life of a pear" by Edouard Manet] there [on the wall, next to the picture "Jupiter and Thetis" by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres], for a pear like that would overthrow any god.
There is too much talk and gossip; pictures are apparently made, like stock-market prices, by competition of people eager for profits... All this traffic sharpens our intelligence and falsifies our judgment.
Art critic! Is that a profession? When I think we are stupid enough, we painters, to solicit those people's compliments and to put ourselves into their hands! What shame! Should we even accept that they talk about our work?
If I were in the government I would have a brigade of policemen assigned to keeping an eye on people who paint landscapes outdoors. Oh, I wouldn't want anyone killed. I'd be satisfied with just a little buckshot to begin with.
Hitherto the nude has always been represented in poses which presuppose an audience. But my women are simple, honest creatures who are concerned with nothing beyond their physical occupations... it is as if you were looking through a keyhole.
I have been, or seemed, hard with everyone because I was carried away by a sort of brutality born of my distrust in myself and my ill-humor. I have felt so badly equipped, so soft, in spite of the fact that my attitude towards art seemed to me so just. I was disgusted with everyone, and especially myself.