Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Art is long. Life is short. A picture can become for us a highway between a particular thing and a universal feeling.
Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.
It vexes me greatly that having to earn my living has forced me to interrupt the work and to attend to small matters.
Putting your hand into a river, you simultaneously touch the last of what is passing and the first of what is coming.
Mechanics is the paradise of the mathematical sciences because by means of it one comes to the fruits of mathematics.
All the bystanders at an event worthy of note adopt various gestures of admiration when contemplating the occurrence.
My philosophy of life is that I am deeply, deeply serious about my work and for the rest I like to have a few laughs.
When the vision of the 'Nude' flashed upon me, I knew that it would break forever the enslaving chains of Naturalism.
Creativity is that marvelous capacity to grasp mutually distinct realities and draw a spark from their juxtaposition.
In art the search for a content which is collectively understandable is false; the content will always be individual.
When I rest, I rest and when I work, I work hard and sometimes for long hours. I always try to be rested when I work.
For loneliness, worries, difficulties, the unsatisfied need for kindness and sympathy - that is what is hard to bear.
Association with my pupils has kept me young in my work. Criticism of their work has kept my own point of view clear.
Brush and ink are only servants of thoughts and emotion. They should follow your emotion and change with the emotion.
I'm really into California art from the '60s. I like a lot of Bay Area artists, like Nathan Oliveira and Bruce Conner.
I guess I’m a little weird. I like to talk to trees and animals. That’s okay though; I have more fun than most people.
I'm never finished with my paintings; the further I get, the more I seek the impossible and the more powerless I feel.
I was definitely born under an evil star. I have just been thrown out of the inn where I was staying, naked as a worm.
In its most limited sense, modern, art would seem to concern itself only with the technical innovations of the period.
This truth must be recognized as a dogma and assume the validity of an axiom in the general understanding of painting.
New York is the cubist, the futurist city. It expresses in its architecture, its life, its spirit, the modern thought.
Your word travels the entirety of space and reaches my cells which are my stars then goes to yours which are my light.
Iceland is a rich country, but in the early 21st century, this prosperity got to our heads, and in 2008, it collapsed.
I find old copies of National Gallery catalogues, which are written in the dryest possible prose, infinitely soothing.
I wonder whether there is such a thing as critical art. I suppose there are portraits of people who could destroy you.
A realization and a dissection of the canon gave rise to the work. But there's also a sneaking suspicion of the canon.
While I can hire out the portrait, I don't, because it's just - that's where I shine. You know, that's my blood sport.
Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer.
Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.
Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places.
I was interested in ideas, not merely visual products. I wanted to put painting once again at the service of the mind.
Man can never expect to start from scratch; he must start from ready-made things, like even his own mother and father.
When I die, it will be a shipwreck, and as when a huge ship sinks, many people all around will be sucked down with it.
I consider a work of art as a product of calculations, calculations that are frequently unknown to the author himself.
I was always artistic - right from childhood - but my love of painting came a bit later. It followed my love of music.
Talent is like a seed which needs fertile soil. There is no less talent now, there is less fertile soil to nourish it.
Every paint-stroke takes you farther and farther away from your initial concept. And you have to be thankful for that.
I don't believe in making pencil sketches and then painting landscape in your studio. You must be right under the sky.
All orthodox opinion - that is, today, "revolutionary" opinion either of the pure or the impure variety - is anti-man.
I never use nature as a starting point. I never abstract from nature; I never consciously think of nature when I paint.
I would love to do orange and lemon trees silhouetted against the blue sea, but I cannot find them the way I want them.
The expressive techniques of painting are capable of conveying an analogy but not an impossible photograph of a moment.
The only quality that endures in art is a personal vision of the world. Methods are transient: personality is enduring.
Inspiration is indispensable to my work, but it is hard to come by. It is there or it is not; it is a gift of the gods.
Even a part of an object has value. A whole new realism resides in the way one envisages an object or one of its parts.
I am happy for people to talk about my pictures, but I wish devoutly that I was not expected to talk about them myself.
How many attempts, now happy, now unhappy!... He who has not felt the difficulties of his art does nothing that counts.
I start from something considered dead and arrive at a world. And when I put a title on it, it becomes even more alive.
My only ambition was to create an honest picture that would interpret nature as she really is, as she ought to be seen.
When I sit down to make a sketch from nature, the first thing I try to do is to forget that I have ever seen a picture.