Whatever the source of emotion that drives me to create, I want to give it a form which has some connection with the visible world, even if it is only to wage war on that world....I want my paintings to be able to defend themselves to resist the invader, just as though there were razor blades on all surfaces so no one could touch them without cutting his hands.
Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time.
All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
Good taste is the enemy of creativity.
Age only matters when one is aging. Now that I have arrived at a great age, I might as well be twenty.
I hate that aesthetic game of the eye and the mind, played by these connoisseurs, these mandarins who "appreciate" beauty. What is beauty, anyway? There's no such thing. I never "appreciate," any more than I "like." I love it or I hate.
The only pictorial matter that is of interest to me is the matter and sentiments brought about by the work itself.
If you're stuck in a painting, then stop and draw something else. Draw a flower and put your love into that flower. Then your powers will come back again.
Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.
When I paint I feel that all the artists of the past are behind me.
Beauty? To me it is a word without sense because I do not know where its meaning comes from nor where it leads to.
No doubt, it is useful for an artist to know all the forms of art which have preceded or which accompany his. That is a sign of strength if it is a question of looking for a stimulus or recognizing mistakes he must avoid.
It is a well-known fact that we see the faults in other's works more readily than we do in our own.
It's always necessary to seek for perfection. Obviously, for us, this word no longer has the same meaning. To me, it means: from one canvas to the next, always go further, further.
We are all born children- the trick is remaining one.
The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web.
I'm a joker who has understood his epoch and has extracted all he possibly could from the stupidity, greed and vanity of his contemporaries.
To make oneself hated is more difficult than to make oneself loved.
Anything new, anything worth doing, can't be recognized.
If I paint a hammer and sickle people may think it is a representation of Communism, but for me it is only a hammer and sickle. I just want to reproduce the objects for what they are, not for what they mean.
A painting only lives in the eye of the beholder
Art is not truth; art is the lie which makes us see the truth.
No, painting is not interior decoration. It is an instrument of war for attack and defense against the enemy.
I have never had time for the idea of searching. Whenever I wanted to express something, I did so without thinking of the past or the future.
The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about it. The more technique there is, the less there is.
I want to get to the stage where nobody can tell how a picture of mine is done. What's the point of that? Simply that I want nothing but emotion given off by it.
I want to create a cat like the real cats I see crossing the streets, not like those you see in houses. They have nothing in common. The cat of the streets has bristling fur. It runs like a fiend, and if it looks at you, you think it is going to jump in your face.
If there were only one truth, you couldn't paint a hundred canvases on the same theme.
Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art.
Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? ...people who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.
When I am finished painting, I paint again for relaxation.
If everyone would paint, political re-education would be unnecessary.
I deal with painting as I deal with things, I paint a window just as I look out of a window. If an open window looks wrong in a picture, I draw the curtain and shut it, just as I would in my own room. In painting, as in life, you must act directly.
I don't develop; I am.
If I like it, I say it's mine. If I don't I say it's a fake.
Music and art are the guiding lights of the world.
There ought to be an absolute dictatorship... a dictatorship of painters... a dictatorship of one painter... to suppress all those who have betrayed us.
If all the ways I have been along were marked on a map and joined up with a line, it might represent a minotaur.
There's nothing more difficult than a line.
I'm not a developer; I am.
To blossom forth, a work of art must ignore or rather forget all the rules.
I have discovered photography. Now I can kill myself. I have nothing else to learn.
I consider a work of art as a product of calculations, calculations that are frequently unknown to the author himself.
Are we to paint what's on the face, what's inside the face, or what's behind it?
The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.
To me there is no past or future in my art. If a work of art cannot live always in the present it must not be considered at all. The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past; perhaps it is more alive today than it ever was.
Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing?
Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.
All Children are Artists
When there's dust missing here or there, it's because someone has touched my things. I see immediately someone has been there. And it's because I live constantly with dust, in dust, that I prefer to wear gray suits, the only color on which it leaves no trace.
It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.
What I capture in spite of myself interests me more than my own ideas.
Go and do the things you can't. That is how you get to do them.
When German soldiers used to come to my studio and look at my pictures of Guernica, they'd ask 'Did you do this?'. And I'd say, 'No, you did.'
In art, practice always comes before theory.
When you begin a picture you often make some pretty discoveries. You must be on guard against these. Destroy the thing, do it over several times. In each destroying of a beautiful discovery, the artist does not really suppress it, but rather condenses it, makes it more substantial. What comes out in the end is the result of discarded finds. Otherwise you become your own connoisseur.
Paintings are but research and experiment. I never do a painting as a work of art. All of them are researches. I search constantly and there is a logical sequence in all this research.
What I achieve the first day can be perfectly valid, but it is not satisfying. If I can go that far spontaneously, then I must shed that result as an old skin and inquire further into the unknown, or at least the not-yet-known-to-myself.
You can go to the moon or walk under the sea, or anything else you like, but painting remains painting because it eludes such investigation. It remains there like a question. And it alone gives the answer.
There are only two types of women - goddesses and doormats.
