Bram van Velde quotes - page 4

There is only the present. A painting is an instant of time that has escaped oblivion. (Bram van Velde)
I paint the impossibility of painting. View quote
Bram van Velde
Painting lives only through the slide towards the unknown in oneself. View quote
Bram van Velde
I can't say anything. There are no words. View quote
Bram van Velde
Yes, perhaps there is some enjoyment in it [his paintings] too, somewhere. View quote
Bram van Velde
Artists don't live in the everyday world. That's why people think they're an odd bunch. View quote
Bram van Velde
A painter is somebody who sees. I paint the moment when I set out. When I set out to see. And it's the same thing for the viewer. When he approaches the canvas, he is advancing towards an encounter. The encounter with vision. View quote
Bram van Velde
The artist is living a secret that he has to make manifest. View quote
Bram van Velde
Each painting contains so much suffering. View quote
Bram van Velde
Painting is so stupid, so simple. I paint to get out of the through. I paint my misery. View quote
Bram van Velde
When I look back to a recent painting, I can hardly bear th suffering in it. (Bram van Velde)
Waiting for the truth. View quote
Bram van Velde
They make you and you have no say in it. It's Godot all the time. A chain around your neck and the whip cracking behind you. View quote
Bram van Velde
Painting is being alive. Through my painting, I beat back this world that stops us living and where we are in constant danger of being destroyed.. .No, you have to know when to keep silent. View quote
Bram van Velde
When you cross any border there is always an uneasy moment when you feel yourself automatically an enemy. Artists don't belong to any group or country.. .When you are living the truth, the world no longer exists, events become unimportant. But the way of truth is not easy.. ..if you are on the side of truth, you have no power. That's why you are always defeated. The power, all the power, is on the side of the world.. .I have been completely absorbed in my adventure. No country, no family, no ties. I didn't exist anymore. I just had to press on. View quote
Bram van Velde
Of course painting is ridiculous. But it's the only way I've got to get closer to life. View quote
Bram van Velde
There's a perpetual duel going on between the world of the spirit and the world of things. Although the one only has meaning in relation to the other. View quote
Bram van Velde
Painting is getting in touch with the truth. It's a matter of summoning up the vision I need. View quote
Bram van Velde
Creating a painting is a matter of ensuring that all its parts achieve unity. Though it's a precarious, fragile unity. View quote
Bram van Velde
The greatest moment is when you realize that the painting you've just finished is nothing. When you manage to detach yourself from it. View quote
Bram van Velde
The real world with its common logic pushes us toward catastrophe. The artists seek in his work to free himself from this weight. Art is being transformed into politics, love into trade, education into an apparatus for stifling the mind. In the midst of such horrors, clearly only the dream within me has life. But how do other people live? -There is color, virginal expression - new, without a cage, without routine, without limit, a bath of sun and light. We must realize that nothing man does is of any value. The trouble is that people want to be paid. Only sick men can be artists. Their suffering pushes them into the accomplishment of deeds which reinvest the world with meaning. The sensitive man or the artist can only be a sick man in our civilized life, so full of lies. To think of art as a profession, how appealing! (Bram van Velde)
Oh Baudelaire... He used to be enormously important to me. It's thanks to him that I was able to get through the war [in Paris, during 1940 – 1945 Van Velde had a long and painful break, with only a few paintings he finished]. A true loyal mind without hypocrisy. The most universal spirit. The greatest Frenchman. I have always been much less interested in painters. View quote
Bram van Velde