Whatever is most abstract may perhaps be the summit of reality.
Two of the most frustrated trades are dentists and photographers - dentists because they want to be doctors, and photographers because they want to be painters.
A painting is not thought out in advance. While it is being done, it changes as one’s thoughts change. And when it’s finished, it goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it
What a trade! Poor painters! They always wish to be understood, and they are analysed instead.
I try to paint what I have found and not what I look for. In art, intentions are of little importance.
Drink to me. Drink to my health. You know I can't drink any more.
Today we haven't the heart to expel the painters and poets from society because we refuse to admit to ourselves that there is any danger in keeping them in our midst.
You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea.
The best calculation is the absence of calculation. Once you have attained a certain level of recognition, others generally figure that when you do something, it's for an intelligent reason. So it's really foolish to plot out your movements too carefully in advance. You're better off acting capriciously.
Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.
Nothing can be done without solitude. I've created my own solitude which nobody suspects
The essential in this time of moral poverty is to create enthusiasm.
Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? no. Just as one can never learn how to paint.
The people no longer seek consolation in art. But the refined people, the rich, the idlers seek the new, the extraordinary, the extravagant, the scandalous. I have contented these people with all the many bizarre things that come into my head. And the less they understand, the more they admire it. By amusing myself with all these games, all this nonsense, all these picture puzzles, I became famous... I am only a public entertainer who has understood his time.
Let them understand above all that the artist works from necessity; that he, too, is a minute element of the world to whom one should ascribe no more importance than so many things in nature which charm us but which we do not explain to ourselves.
If you give a meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning. What ideas and conclusions you have got I obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I make the painting for the painting. I paint the objects for what they are.
I hate it when people pilfer my things.
What does it mean for a painter to paint in the manner of So-and-So or to actually imitate someone else? What's wrong with that? On the contrary, it's a good idea. You should constantly try to paint like someone else. But the thing is, you can't! You would like to. You try. But it turns out to be a botch... And it's at the very moment you make a botch of it that you're yourself.
The earth doesn't have a housekeeper to do the dusting.
It takes a long time to become young.
There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun
By amusing myself with all these games, all this nonsense, all these picture puzzles, I became famous... I am only a public entertainer who has understood his time.
If I knew what the meaning of art was, I wouldn't tell you.
Art is an instrument in the war against the enemy.
Love must be proven by facts and not by reasons.
We don't grow older, we grow riper.
If you take my sayings and explode them in the air, they remain only sayings. But if you fit them together in their correct places, you will have the whole story.
The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.
For me, there are two kinds of women - goddesses and doormats.
The path to youth takes a lifetime.
You can't escape your own period. Whether you take sides for or against, you're always in it.
Reality is to be found in lightness and darkness.
Through art we express our conception of what nature is not.
Is there anything more dangerous than sympathetic understanding?
I do not evolve, I am.
Art is lies that tell the truth.
You have to start somewhere. You can always erase reality later on.
The purpose of Art is to create enthusiasm.
In life you throw a ball. You hope it will reach a wall and bounce back so you can throw it again. You hope your friends will provide that wall.
I have had no true friends, only lovers.
When I haven't any blue I use red.
What is a face, really? Its own photo? Its make-up? Or is it a face as painted by such or such painter? That which is in front? Inside? Behind? And the rest? Doesn't everyone look at himself in his own particular way? Deformations simply do not exist.
The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.
I paint the way someone bites his fingernails; for me, painting is a bad habit because I don't know nor can I do anything else.
If one knows exactly what is going to be done, why do it?
It's not what the artist does that counts; it's what he is.
When I work I relax; doing nothing or entertaining visitors makes me tired.
Those who attempts to explain a picture are on the wrong track most of the time.
If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.
To model an object is to possess it.
You see these thick curtains shut out the daylight: artificial light suits me a great deal better; it's absolutely steady, and much more exciting.
How could Michelangelo have seen his David in a block of marble? Man began to make images only because he discovered them nearly formed around him, already within reach. He saw them in a bone, in the bumps of a cave, in a piece of wood. One form suggested a woman to him, another a buffalo, still another the head of a monster.
When you're really young, you're young for life.
Today, as you know, I am famous and very rich. But when I am alone with myself, I haven't the 'courage' to consider myself an artist, in the great and ancient sense of that word... I am only a public entertainer, who understands his age.
It is my misfortune - and probably my delight - to use things as my passions tell me. What a miserable fate for a painter who adores blondes to have to stop himself putting them into a picture because they don't go with the basket of fruit! . . . I put all the things I like into my pictures. The things - so much the worse for them. They just have to put up with it.
When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.
When the individuality of the artist begins to express itself, what the artist gains in the way of liberty he loses in the way of order.
Can you imagine me calling myself "Ruiz"? "Pablo Ruiz"? "Diego-José Ruiz"? Or "Juan-Népomucène Ruiz"? I was given I don't know how many names.
There is only one way to see things, until someone shows us how to look at them with different eyes
Art is a finger up the bourgeoisie ass.
