To draw you must close your eyes and sing.
If I don't have red, I use blue.
Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.
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
As far as I am concerned, a painting speaks for itself. What is the use of giving explanations, when all is said and done? A painter has only one language.
I'm not a developer; I am.
Photographers, along with dentists, are the two professions never satisfied with what they do. Every dentist would like to be a doctor and inside every photographer is a painter trying to get out.
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.
I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful? One must speak of problems in painting!
Through art we express our conception of what nature is not.
Art is lies that tell the truth.
We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.
You have to start somewhere. You can always erase reality later on.
We don't grow older, we grow riper.
The people who make art their business are mostly imposters.
Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.
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.
Art is an instrument in the war against the enemy.
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.'
When I was a kid I drew like Michelangelo. It took me years to learn to draw like a kid.
A good picture, any picture, has to be bristling with razor blades.
If it's good, it's mine. If it's bad, it's a fake.
Disciples be damned. It's not interesting. It's only the masters that matter. Those who create.
Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.
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.
How often have I found that wanting to use blue, I didn't have it so I used a red instead of the blue.
To make oneself hated is more difficult than to make oneself loved.
Give me a museum and I'll fill it.
Through education comes understanding. Through understanding comes true appreciation. All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.
If everyone would paint, political re-education would be unnecessary.
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist while still achieving milestones and outcomes as required by certain funders and policy-makers.
Critics, mathematicians, scientists and busybodies want to classify everything, marking the boundaries and limits... In art, there is room for all possibilities.
To me there is no past or future in art. If a work of art does not live in the present, it must not be considered at all.
He was an Afghan Hound name Kabul. Since him I have had other Afghan Hounds.... Perhaps I am looking for his ghost. He is the only one that I sometimes think about. Often, if he comes in to my mind when I am working, it alters what I do. The nose on the face I am drawing gets longer and sharper. The hair of the woman I am sketching gets longer and fluffy, resting against her cheeks like his ears rested against his head.
...why did Plato say that poets should be chased out of the republic? Precisely because every poet and every artist is an antisocial being. He's not that way because he wants to be; he can't be any other way.... and if he really is an artist it is in his nature not to want to be admitted, because if he is admitted it can only mean he is doing something which is understood, approved, and therefore old hat - worthless. Anything new, anything worth doing, can't be recognized.
Art is a finger up the bourgeoisie ass.
The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.
One must act in painting as in life, directly.
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.
For those who know how to read, I have painted my autobiography
It is a well-known fact that we see the faults in other's works more readily than we do in our own.
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.
You mustn't expect me to repeat myself. My past doesn't interest me. I would rather copy others than copy myself. In that way I should at least be giving them something new. I love discovering things.
Everybody has the same energy potential. The average person wastes his in a dozen little ways. I bring mine to bear on one thing only: my paintings, and everything else is sacrificed to it...myself included.
I understand my own pictures best six months after I have done them.
The trouble is, we've been taught what to see and how to render what we see. If only we could be in the position of those men who did those wonderful drawings in Lascaux and Altimira!
Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.
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.
The connoisseur of painting gives only bad advice to the painter. For that reason I have given up trying to judge myself.
Painting isn't made for the decoration of apartments; it is a weapon to be used offensively and defensively against the enemy.
An artist must be very careful not to look for models. As soon as one artist takes another as model, he is lost. There is no other point of departure than reality.
All Children are Artists
The artist spends the first part of his life with the dead, the second with the living, and the third with himself.
People are always asking me to sign my old canvases. It's ridiculous!
It is personality with a penny's worth of talent. Error which chances to rise above the commonplace.
I don't work from nature, I work like nature.
If I knew what the meaning of art was, I wouldn't tell you.
I would like to manage to prevent people from ever seeing how a picture of mine has been done. What can it possibly matter? What I want is that the only thing emanating from my pictures should be emotion.
Painting is not made to decorate apartments. It's an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy. (about Guernica).
