Paris Quotes - page 15
Everything you tell me in your last letter, which is to say that to spend more time with me they will give up going to Paris, fills me with the greatest pleasure.. .I find myself much better, and I hope to be back where I was before.. .I am happy to be better to receive my most beloved travelers. This improvement I owe to Molina.
Francisco Goya
I admired and felt the anonymous structure of the work of Brancusi, Vantongerloo, Arp, and Taeuber-Arp [the wife of Hans Arp] whose studios I visited. [Kelly frequently visited Hans Arp and his wife in Paris and discussed his fresh-made art with them intensively]. Their work reinforced my own ideas for the creation of a Pré-Renaissance, European type art: its anonymous stone work, the object quality of the artifacts, the fact that the work was more important than the artist's personality. Of the Europeans, I mostly admired the way Picasso, Klee and Brancusi 'made' their art. Contrary to what has been said about me, Mondrian and Matisse did not interest me when I was in Paris. Mondrian's [paintings] could not be seen in Paris and when I did see them in Holland in 1953, I thought their structure too rigid and intellectual.
Ellsworth Kelly
When I left Paris in 1954, I saw no art that was being 'made' like mine and returning to the U. S. I found no one 'making' art that way either. In my own work, I have never been interested in painterliness (or what I find is) a very personal handwriting, putting marks on a canvas. My work is a different way of seeing and making something and which has a different use.
Ellsworth Kelly
I began to draw from plant life and found the flat leaf forms were easier to do than thighs and breasts. I wanted to flatten. The plant drawings from that time until now have always been linear. They are exact observations of the form of the leaf or flower of fruit seen. Nothing is changed or added, no surface marking. They are not an approximation of the thing seen nor are they a personal expression or an abstraction. They are an impersonal observation of the form. When I applied the procedure to other things such as the vaulting of Notre Dame [church in Paris] or a patch of tar on the road, the subject of the drawings and the subsequent paintings were not recognizable even though they were exact copies of the thing seen. I wanted to use things that had no pictorial use.
Ellsworth Kelly
In 1949, I ceased figurative painting and began works that were object oriented. The drawings from plant life seem to be a bridge to the way of seeing that brought about the paintings in 1949 that are the basis for all my later work. After arriving in Paris in 1948, I realized that figurative painting and also abstract painting (though my knowledge of the latter was very limited) as I had known in the 20th century no longer interested me as a solution to my own problems. I wanted to give up easel painting which I felt was too personal.
Ellsworth Kelly
Instead of making a picture that was an interpretation of a thing seen, or a picture of invented content, I found an object and 'presented' it as itself alone. My first object was 'Window' [Museum of Modern Art, Paris], done in 1949. After constructed 'Window' with two canvases and a wood frame I realized that from then on painting as I had known it was finished for me. The new works were to be objects, unsigned, anonymous.
Ellsworth Kelly
When I came back to Paris in 1931, after a long convalescence in the South, the 'Abstraction-Création' group had just be founded. Vantongerloo had been given our mailing list. At the same time I learned of Van Doesburg's death in Davos. The first issue of 'Abstraction-Création' came off the press just a year later, printed in the same dusty small shop that had brought out 'Cercle et Carré' and where I had earned a meagre living as a non-union proof-reader and make-up man. 'Abstraction-Création' had a much wider influence than its predecessor. From 1932 to 1936 an annual cahier presented reproductions and statements by painters.
Michel Seuphor
![Every painter must traverse for himself that distance from Paris to Aix (Aix-en-Provence where Paul Cézanne frequently painted in open air] or from Venice to Toledo [where w:El Greco lived and painted for many years]. Expression is for one knowing its own pivot. Every expressor relates solely to himself – that is the concern of the individualist. (Marsden Hartley)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/70/marsden-hartley-air-concern-290370.webp)
Having reached the surface [in the Paris' Metro] I remained crazed for a long time, gathering my spirits. I had the impression that I had been vomited by a monstrous anus after being tumultuously brewed by an intestine. I did not know where I was; as though spat out on to unknown land, a pointless little excrement... And, a miracle!... This shock was a beneficial revelation. One must at every opportunity use the subterranean paths of action and thought, erase the traces, appear suddenly and irrelevantly, endless conquer oneself, never hesitate to sodomize one's soul so that it will be reborn purer and stronger than ever.
Salvador Dalí
It is difficult to hold the world's interest for more than half an hour at a time... I have been successful for twenty years, to the extent that papers publish the most incomprehensible new items of our time, sent by teletype: PARIS. Dali gave lecture at Sorbonne on Vermeer's paintings 'lacemaker' and the rhinoceros.... NEW YORK. Dali landed in New York dressed in a golden space-suit.
Salvador Dalí
From the moment I arrived in Cadaqués [Summer of 1929] I was assailed by a resurgence of my childhood period. The six years of secondary school, the three years in Madrid and the trip I had just made to Paris, all totally faded into the background, while all the fantasies and representations of my childhood period came back to take victorious possession of my mind.
Salvador Dalí
My dear Theo, Feeling, even a fine feeling, for the beauties of nature isn't the same as religious feeling, although I believe that the two are closely connected. The same is true of a feeling for art. Don't give in to that too much either. Hold fast especially to your love for the firm [of the Paris' art dealers Goupil & C0, where both brothers worked - Vincent started in 1869 and Theo in 1873] and for your work.... Nearly everyone has a feeling for nature, some more than others, but there are few who feel that God is a spirit, and that they must worship Him in spirit and in truth. Pa is one of the few, Ma too, and also Uncle Vincent, I believe.
Vincent van Gogh
Don't be cross with me that I've come all of a sudden [to move from Antwerp to Paris]. I've thought about it so much and I think we'll save time this way. Will be at the Louvre from midday, or earlier if you like. A reply, please, to let me know when you could come to the Salle Carrée. As for expenses, I repeat, it comes to the same thing. I have some money left, that goes without saying, and I want to talk to you before spending anything.
Vincent van Gogh
I was certainly going the right way for a stroke when I left Paris. I paid for it nicely afterwards! When I stopped drinking, when I stopped smoking so much, when I began again to think instead of trying not to think - good Lord, the depression and the prostration of it! Work in these magnificent natural surroundings [of Arles ] has helped my morale.
Vincent van Gogh
![I'd like you [Theo] to spend some time here, you'd feel it - after some time your vision changes, you see with a more Japanese eye, you feel colour differently. I'm also convinced that it's precisely through a long stay here that I'll bring out my personality. The Japanese [like a. o. Hokusai, admired by Vincent] draws quickly, very quickly, like a flash of lightning, because his nerves are finer, his feeling simpler. I've been here [Arles] only a few months but - tell me, in Paris would I have drawn in an hour the drawing of the boats?... Now this [sketch] was done without measuring, letting the pen go. So I tell myself that gradually the expenses will be balanced by work. (Vincent van Gogh)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/55/vincent-van-gogh-arles-445955.webp)
When we did Cubist paintings [Picasso and Georges Braque, in their early Cubist period in Paris], our intention was not to produce Cubist paintings but to express what was within us. No one laid down a course of action for us, and our friends the poets [a. o. Appolinaire and Cendral] followed our endeavor attentively but they never dictated it to us.
Pablo Picasso
It is true that other people can help you, and to lasting effect.. .If I hadn't had Beckett in 1940 [in Paris, when Van Velde was strongly demoralized by the death of his wife], I'm not sure I could have stood it. I am really not sure.. .At that time he [Beckett] he was driven by an extremely aggressive and fiery Irish spirit. That has lessened as time has gone on.. .I don't know anywhere in modern art any more faithful or more impressive picture of contemporary humanity than the one he offers us in 'The Unamable'.
Bram van Velde
I met Beckett at my brother's [ w:Geert van Velde, also an abstract painter] place. That was a Big meeting [circa 1938, in Paris], in capital letters. It was before war started, life was still normal. That time I was very lonely. We saw each other often. Before the war he had published already something, but his fame came in 1953. We never spoke about his work. He was a taciturn man. Sometimes a word escaped from his mouth. Sure, a word you would never forget. It would stick in your head... This friendship with Beckett is the most important experience in my life. He was fully alive for my way of working. What he could express in words, I did with my paintings.
Bram van Velde
