Paris Quotes - page 33
![My new installment [Mondrian moved to a new studio in Paris, where he applied the principles of Neo-Plasticism into the interior of his studio ] is about decoration, occasioned by my studio here, where I've set up a sort of display. I couldn't work directly on the walls, so I had to make do with pieces of painted cardboard. But in any case, I am now convinced that in this way it is possible to realize Neo-Plasticism in the interior. Of course I had to paint the furniture as well. It was worth the effort, as it has a favourable influence on my work. (Piet Mondrian)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/05/piet-mondrian-cardboard-case-1011505.webp)
Perhaps it was his return to Paris [In June 1919 Piet Mondrian returned from The Netherlands to Paris] that was needed to provide him with fresh new possibilities in his work. Invigoration. His most recent work is without composition. The division of the picture plane is modular. That means ordinary rectangles, all the same size. The only contrast is in the colour. In my view, this runs counter to his theory concerning the abolition of position and dimension. This is in effect equality of position and dimension.
Piet Mondrian
My entrance into the field of abstract art came about as the result of a visit to the studio of Piet Mondrian in Paris in 1930. I was particularly impressed by some rectangles of color he had tacked on his wall in a pattern after his nature. I told him I would like to make them oscillate he objected. I went home and tried to paint abstractly - but in two weeks I was back again among plastic materials. I think that at that time and practically ever since, the underlying sense of form in my work has been the system of the Universe, or part thereof. For that is a rather large model to work from.
Piet Mondrian
Mondrian is often portrayed as a rational, ascetic man, a monk who shut himself away in his studio to work on his paintings in peace and quiet. But if you look at the historical facts, you have to conclude that the opposite is in fact true. Mondrian flourished as an artist in Paris, became famous in New York and spent his time in the company of bohemian artists, and spent his money on nightlife and women.
Piet Mondrian
One of our [his] utopian ideas is the desire to overcome the limitations of the substructure, of the earthbound. We have developed this idea in a series of proposals (sky-hooks, [like Lissitzky's paper-architecture design 'Wolkenbügel' (1924)] stadium grandstands, Paris garage].. .It is the task of technology to make sure that all these elementary volumes that produce new relationships and tensions in space will be structurally safe.. .The idea of the conquest of the substructure, the earthbound, can be extended even further and calls for the conquest of gravity as such. It demands floating structures, a physical-dynamic architecture.
El Lissitsky
Dear Mr. Rosenberg [art-dealer in Paris, then], - Many thanks for your good letters which are a great encouragement to me. I assure you that you are the man who has encouraged me the most so far. Please excuse the tone of declaration. I will also show my gratitude when I am in Paris by doing a good life-size portrait of you, or of a member of your family if you prefer, and I would like you to accept it as a gift. I intend to be in Paris around 15 November. My mother and my brother send their best wishes. - Mr. Rosenberg, please accept my devotion, esteem and gratitude.
Giorgio de Chirico
Yehudi Menuhin could play difficult violin pieces by Mozart, Beethoven and Bach at age 7. He played in Carnegie Hall at 11. He was 12 when he made his first record. At 13, he'd played in the finest concert halls in Berlin, London, and Paris. At 19, he embarked on his first world tour – 110 concerts, 63 cities and 13 countries. Yet at 19 he couldn't play a simple A major scale or a basic three-octave arpeggio. And he'd never figured out music theory.
Yehudi Menuhin
His great object was to obtain the glitter and sparkle of nature after a shower; and for this purpose, passing by the oak and elm, our two first trees, he took the white poplar and the ash - the one for the leaf, the other for the bark. This I had from himself, and it is a key to his pictures. A French paysagiste [landscape-painter] once came from Paris to request him to show him his method of painting. Constable said he should have been most happy to meet his wishes, but that unfortunately he had no method, and got his pictures up he did not know how. This I had from Mr. Field, who was present.
John Constable
I should lie if I said that I was at once in agreement with him [President Wilson] on all the points. America is far distant from the frontiers of Germany, as I remarked a little while ago. I have, perhaps, preoccupations which I would not say are foreign to him, but which do not touch him so closely as they touch the man who has seen his country devastated during four years by an enemy who was within several days of Paris.
Georges Clemenceau
I have pursued a lone heresy of wondering why NATO even survived the end of its enemies, the USSR and the Warsaw Pact. Do we still maintain alliances against Austria-Hungary or the Ottomans? I can find no trace of them. Perhaps, overlooked in some elegant Paris street and living off ancient funds, elderly, learned men still occupy these joyous sinecures, hoping that they will not be found out.
Peter Hitchens
Now, Alithia - her dream was to go to art school in Paris and one day share her art with the world. Ryan and Jessica were eager to share Alithia's art with us, and said if we could share it, then somehow maybe that would make Alithia smile in heaven. They told us that showing someone else Alithia's art would in some way keep her alive.
Now, this particular drawing is a - is a self-portrait of Alithia drawing, with her friend in heaven looking down on her drawing the very same picture. Her mother said, of this drawing - she said, "You know, we never really talked to her about heaven before, but somehow she knew."
Alithia was 10 years old.
Her father, Ryan - this man was steady. He was uncommonly together and calm. When a frazzled friend of his came up and said, "How are you so calm? I'd be going crazy," Ryan told him - he said, "No, you wouldn't. No, you wouldn't. You'd be strong for your wife and kids, because if they see you go crazy, that will not help them."
Matthew McConaughey
I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear... My lifetime's memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris.
Roger Ebert
You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all the bakery shops had such good things in windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food. When you were skipping meals at a time when you had given up journalism and were writing nothing that anyone in America would buy, explaining at home that you were lunching out with someone, the best place to do it was the Luxembourg gardens... There you could always go into the Luxembourg museum and all the paintings were heightened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty, hollow-hungry. I learned to understand Cézanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry.
Ernest Hemingway
If I could really paint! A month ago I was so sure of what I wanted. Inside me I saw it out there, walked around with it like a queen, and was blissful. Now the veils have fallen again, gray veils, hiding the whole idea of me. I stand like a beggar at the door, shivering in the cold, pleading to be let in. It is hard to move patiently, step by step, when one is young and demanding.. .I walk along the boulevards [Paris] and crowds of people pass by and something inside me cries out, 'I still have such beautiful things before me. None of you, not one, has such things'. And then it cries, 'When will it come? Soon?'
Paula Modersohn-Becker
I saw you standing with the wind and the rain in your face
And you were thinking 'bout the wisdom of the leaves and their grace
When the leaves come falling down
In September when the leaves, come falling down
Oh, the last time I saw Paris in the streets, in the rain
And as I walk along the boulevards with you, once again
And the leaves come falling down
In September, when the leaves come falling down.
Van Morrison
I visit Paris often, and have considerably studied the French character. In individuals it is often excellent; but taken in general it disgusts by its petulance and vanity. The French have always been dissolute in their amours; and are thus led to assail the chastity of foreign women, the most unpardonable of all affronts to fathers, brothers, husbands, and lovers. This, and their petulant overbearing conduct, prevent their conquests from being lasting. Yes, I swear to you by the Sicilian vespers, they can never be of much duration.
Horace Walpole
No French government except Léon Blum's short-lived Popular Front of 1936 paid serious attention to the grievous mis-rule practiced by colonial administrators in French North Africa. Moderate Algerian nationalists like Ferhat Abbas were well known to French politicians and intellectuals before and after World War Two, but no-one really expected Paris to concede their modest goals of self-government or ‘home rule' any time soon.
Tony Judt
The woman of City of Paris' [Delaunay painted in 1910 – 1912] sums up the [his] Cubist period.. ..'The Cardiff team' [he painted in 1913] is more significant in the expression of colour, less shattered. The yellow poster in the complete picture contrasts with the blues, greens and orange.
Robert Delaunay
I have told him nothing [an art-journalist in Paris who wrote in 1887: 'Seurat sees his paternity of the theory Neo-Impressionism contested by misinformed critics and unscrupulous comrades'], but what I have always thought: the more of us [the Neo-Impressionists] there are, the less originality we will have, and the day when everyone this technique, it will no longer have any value and people will look for something new as is already happening.. .It is my right to think this and to say it, since I paint in this way [ Neo-Impressionistic ], only to find a new approach which is my own.
Georges Seurat
Great as was my wonderment [visiting the 8th Impressionist Exhibition, May/June 1886, at 1, rue Laffitte in Paris] it was tenfold increased on discovering that only six of these pictures were painted by the new man, Seurat, whose name was unknown to me; the other five were painted by my old friend Pissarro.. .The pictures were hung low, so I went down on my knees and examined the dotting in the pictures signed Seurat, and the dotting in those that were signed, Pissarro. After a strict examination I was able to detect some differences, and I began to recognize the well-known touch even through this most wild and most wonderful transformation. Yes, owing to a long and intimate acquaintance with Pissarro and his work, I could distinguish between him and Seurat, but to the ordinary visitor their pictures were identical.
Georges Seurat
