Painter Quotes - page 25
The world is violent and mercurial - it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love - love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love.
Tennessee Williams
It was Constable's persuasion that you should always work in one material: if a water-colour painter, that you should take Nature in water-colour; if an oil-painter, in oil. Not that he rigidly carried out his own views, as he always had a small sketchbook with him in which he noted down anything that struck him; but his sketching, both in water-colour and pencil, was very inferior to his oils.
John Constable
Had optical perception not evolved into something more than sensory perception, into super-sensory perception, then the present period would never have had the courage to discover the spiritual in matter. There would have been no fundamental difference between a painting by Picasso [from Picasso's so-called 'abstract' period] and one by Paulus Potter [Dutch painter from the 17th century, famous for his painting of cows].
Theo van Doesburg
This eminent painter, whose contempt for the follies of mankind kept pace with his acute observation of them, was so disgusted at the blind preference paid to his powers of portraiture that for many years of his residence at Bath he regularly shut up all his landscapes in the back apartments of his house, to which no common visitors were admitted. The landscape that first found its way into any collection was purchased of him by the late Henry Hoare, Esq., of Stourhead, on a friend's recommendation! and so little even then was the merit of Gainsborough duly estimated that Mr. Bampfylde, a dilettante in painting, being on a visit to Stourhead, offered to mend Gainsborough's sheep by repainting them, and was allowed to do so. They have been restored to their original deficiencies by the taste and good sense of the present possessor of that beautiful place [Sir Richard Colt Hoare ].
Thomas Gainsborough
When I was fifteen and had quit school forever, I went to work in a vineyard near Sanger with a number of Mexicans, one of whom was only a year or two older than myself, an earnest boy named Felipe. One gray, dismal, cold, dreary day in January, while we were pruning muscat vines, I said to this boy, simply in order to be talking, "If you had your wish, Felipe, what would you want to be? A doctor, a farmer, a singer, a painter, a matador, or what?" Felipe thought a minute, and then he said, "Passenger." This was exciting to hear, and definitely something to talk about at some length, which we did. He wanted to be a passenger on anything that was going anywhere, but most of all on a ship.
William Saroyan
My recollection of meeting him [ Jackson Pollock ] outside of this one incident, was at a show that John Graham did at the MacMillin Gallery [1942]. He invited someone called Jackson Pollock and myself, and, I believe, de Kooning. There were three unknown Americans put into that show and it turned out we were the three and it was through that source, my trying to track down the other unknown American who was painting abstractly at that point, as though I knew them all in New York City.. ..and I promptly went up to Pollock's studio and that's when I say I met Pollock for the first time.. ..And then, you see, after I saw Pollock, met him, saw the work, I said, "I understand the third painter is de Kooning," and he said he didn't know de Kooning and I said, "Well, I do and I'll take you over and introduce you." So I brought Pollock up to de Kooning's studio. De Kooning was in a loft at that time because he was something, and that is how Pollock met De Kooning.
Lee Krasner
In any case, only the execution counts. From this point of view, it is correct to say that Cubism has a Spanish origin and that I invented Cubism. We must look for the Spanish influence in Paul Cézanne. Things themselves necessitate it, the influence of El Greco, a Venetian painter, on him. But his structure is Cubist.
El Greco
There have always been two schools of thought in painting: that of the Idealists and that of the Realists.. .Monsieur Courbet belongs to the second school, but he differs from it in that he seems to have taken an ideal opposite to the usual ideal: whereas the straightforward Realists are happy to copy nature as they see it, our young painter, parodying for his own benefit the verses of Nicolas Boileau Despréaux, seems to be saying: 'Only the ugly is beautiful, only the ugly is likeable.' It is not enough for the people to be common; he selects his subjects and then deliberately exaggerates their crudeness and vulgarity.
Gustave Courbet
There is ... your high bridge in Pasadena from which every once in a while someone jumps off, committing suicide. There is no question of removing the bridge. Poems have been written by well-known authors that are supposed to have driven love-sick young people to suicide. These works are not banned. Thousands lose their lives in automobile accidents, yet nothing is done to restrain manufacturers from building lethal instruments that can do more than 30 miles an hour. To me, a painter, if not the most useful, is the least harmful member of our society. An unskilled cook or doctor can put our lives in danger. l have tried ... to paint a picture that would, like the beautiful head of Medusa, turn the spectator to stone ... so that certain ones who looked at it would drop dead ... but l have not yet succeeded!
Man Ray
l paint what cannot be photographed, and l photograph what l do not wish to paint. lf it is a portrait that interests me, a face, or a nude, I will use my camera. It is quicker than making a drawing or a painting. But if it is something I cannot photograph, like a dream or a subconscious impulse I have to resort to drawing or painting. To express what I feel I use the medium best suited to express that idea, which is also always the most economical one. l am not at all interested in being consistent as a painter, and object-maker or a photographer. I can use several different techniques, like the old masters who were engineers, musicians and poets at the same time. I have never shared the contempt shown by painters for photography: there is no competition involved, painting and photography are two media engaged in different paths. There is no conflict between the two.
Man Ray
We thought, that Titian, the painter, would some day finish our picture; but he seems to take no account of us whatever. We therefore instruct you to tell him instantly, that we are surprised that he should not have finished our picture; that he must finish it under all circumstances or incur our great displeasure; and he may be made to feel that he is doing an ill turn to one who can resent it. We are determined that he shall complete the work he promised : if he does not, we shall see to his doing it, and you are to advise us instantly of his resolution.
Titian
Other Venetians may, in one or the other way, more irresistibly enlist our sympathies, or may shine out for the moment more brilliantly in some special branch of their art; yet, after all, we find ourselves invariably comparing them to Titian, not Titian to them, taking him as the standard for the measurement of even his greatest contemporaries and successors. ..
.He is the greatest painter of the sixteenth century, just because, being the greatest colorist of the higher order, and in legitimate mastery of the brush second to none, he makes the worthiest use of his unrivaled accomplishment, not merely to call down the applause due to supreme pictorial skill and the victory over self-set difficulties, but, above all, to give the fullest and most legitimate expression to the subjects which he presents, and through them to himself.
Titian
The self-inflicted isolation of the contemporary artist and the mistrust levelled against the architect are both important contributing factors in the current situation of architectural art. The painter is anxious to keep intact the historical image of artist as loner, the intense sensitive, the genius and "maestro”; while the architect, feeling the watchful eye of his client constantly over his shoulder, approaches any extra-to-budget expense, such as art, with considerable trepidation, guarding jealously any intrusion into his building by potential glory-thieves. – Clarke in the essay 'Towards a New Constructivism', from his 1979 book Architectural Stained Glass.
Brian Clarke
For four hundred years the human race has not made a step but what has left its plain vestige behind. We enter now upon great centuries. The sixteenth century will be known as the age of painters, the seventeenth will be termed the age of writers, the eighteenth the age of philosophers, the nineteenth the age of apostles and prophets. To satisfy the nineteenth century, it is necessary to be the painter of the sixteenth, the writer of the seventeenth, the philosopher of the eighteenth; and it is also necessary, like Louis Blane, to have the innate and holy love of humanity which constitutes an apostolate, and opens up a prophetic vista into the future. In the twentieth century war will be dead, the scaffold will be dead, animosity will be dead, royalty will be dead, and dogmas will be dead; but Man will live. For all there will be but one country-that country the whole earth; for all there will be but one hope-that hope the whole heaven.
Victor Hugo
You must be painter who takes a canvas and does what he likes with it. We are more like painters in past centuries who were ordered to paint frescoes to specific measurements. Among the people in the fresco may be a bishop, the prince's wife, etc. The fresco isn't bad simply because the painter used for models people from the court of the prince who ordered and paid for it.
Michelangelo Antonioni
Also, the son of a miller [= Rembrandt] in Leiden is esteemed highly, though prematurely. Elyas Veldenus [= Esaias van der Velde ] is an elegant painter, though unimportant, now residing at the Hague. The rector Scrivelius showed me his portrait, very lifelike on a panel by the Haarlem painter Frans Hals.
Rembrandt
