Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Alchemy is a kind of philosophy: a kind of thinking that leads to a way of understanding.
In my day artists wanted to be outcasts, pariahs. Now they are all integrated into society
I am afraid to end up being in need to sell canvases - in other words, to be a society painter.
Dada was an extreme protest against the physical side of painting. It was a metaphysical attitude.
Distortion came first from the fauves, who, in turn, were under the strong influence of primitive art.
I feel shame, not for the wrong things I have done, but for the right things that I have failed to do.
The word 'art' interests me very much. If it comes from Sanskrit, as I've heard, it signifies 'making.
One is a painter because one wants so-called freedom; one doesn't want to go to the office every morning.
Chess players are madmen of a certain quality, the way the artist is supposed to be, and isn't, in general.
This concern which interests us more than anything else: the blurring of the distinction between art and life.
In New York in 1915 I bought at a hardware store a snow shovel on which I wrote in advance of the broken arm .
I was highly attracted to chess for forty or forty-five years; then, little by little, my enthusiasm lessened.
I really had no program or any established plan. I didn't even ask myself if I should sell my paintings or not.
Among our articles of lazy hardware, I recommend the faucet that stops dripping when no one is listening to it.
Painting is a language of its own. You cannot interpret one form of expression with another form of expression.
The life of an artist is like the life of a monk, a lewd monk if you like, very Rabelaisian. It is an ordination.
It's true, of course, humor is very important in my life, as you know. That's the only reason for living, in fact.
I'm not at all sure that the concept of the readymade isn't the most important single idea to come out of my work.
In the creative act, the artist goes from intention to realization through a chain of totally subjective reactions.
Why are all the artists so dead-set on distorting? It seems to be a reaction against photography, but I'm not sure.
When the vision of the 'Nude' flashed upon me, I knew that it would break forever the enslaving chains of Naturalism.
Man can never expect to start from scratch; he must start from ready-made things, like even his own mother and father.
I was interested in ideas, not merely visual products. I wanted to put painting once again at the service of the mind.
I believe that the artist doesn't know what he does. I attach even more importance to the spectator than to the artist.
All decisions in the artistic execution of the work rest with pure intuition and cannot be translated into a self-analysis.
I happen to have been born a Cartesian. The French education is based on a sequence of strict logic. You carry it with you.
What art is, in reality, is this missing link, not the links which exist. It's not what you see that is art; art is the gap.
I've decided that art is a habit-forming drug. That's all it is, for the artist, for the collector, for anybody connected with it.
My position is the lack of a position, but, of course, you can't even talk about it; the minute you talk, you spoil the whole game.
The artist performs only one part of the creative process. The onlooker completes it, and it is the onlooker who has the last word.
If your choice enters into it, then taste is involved - bad taste, good taste, uninteresting taste. Taste is the enemy of art, A-R-T.
There is something like an explosion in the meaning of certain words: they have a greater value than their meaning in the dictionary.
Things were sort of Bohemian in Montmartre - one lived, one painted, one was a painter - all that doesn't mean anything, fundamentally.
In the last analysis, the artist may shout from all the rooftops that he is a genius; he will have to wait for the verdict of posterity.
I came to feel an artist might use anything - a dot, a line, the most conventional or unconventional symbol - t say what he wanted to say.
What would I do with money? I have enough for my needs. I don't want any more. If I had a lot, I would have to care for it, worry about it.
To all appearances, the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing.
I didn't abandon everything at a moment's notice - on the contrary. I returned to France from America, leaving the 'Large Glass' unfinished.
I thought to discourage aesthetics... I threw the bottlerack and the urinal in their faces and now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty.
You cannot define electricity. The same can be said of art. It is a kind of inner current in a human being, or something which needs no definition.
I don’t care about the word ‘art’ because it has been so discredited. So I want to get rid of it. There is an unnecessary adoration of ‘art’ today.
It is a matter of great indifference to me what criticism is printed in the papers and the magazines. I am simply working out my own ideas in my own way.
I couldn't go into the haphazard drawing or the paintings, the splashing of paint. I wanted to go back to a completely dry drawing, a dry conception of art.
I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art - and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position.
My idea was to chose an object that wouldn't attract me, either by its beauty or by its ugliness. To find a point of indifference in my looking at it, you see
It is curious to note how fragile the memory is, even for the important times in one's life. This is, moreover, what explains the fortunate fantasy of history.
The individual, man as a man, man as a brain, if you like, interests me more than what he makes, because I've noticed that most artists only repeat themselves.
The individual - man as a man, man as a brain, if you like - interests me more than what he makes because I've noticed that most artists only repeat themselves.
I think there is a great deal to the idea of not doing a thing, but that when you do a thing, you don't do it in five minutes or in five hours, but in five years.
I am against the word 'anti' because it's a little bit like 'atheist,' as compared to 'believer.' And an atheist is just as much of a religious man as the believer is.