Quotes, Quotations and Sayings

Now there is fame! Of all -- hunger, misery, the incomprehension by the public -- fame is by far the worst. It is the castigation of God by the artist. It is sad. It is true.

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.

Every positive value has its price in negative terms...The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.

It is your work in life that is your ultimate seduction.

Art washes away the dust of everyday life.

Everyone wants to understand painting. Why is there no attempt to understand the song of the birds?;"Pablo Picasso

To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final blow the coup de grace for the painter as well as for the picture.

I paint objects as I think them not as I see them.

When you start with a portrait and search for a pure form, a clear volume, through successive eliminations, you arrive inevitably at the egg. Likewise, starting with the egg and following the same process in reverse, one finishes with the portrait.

I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.

High culture is nothing but a child of that European perversion called history, the obsession we have with going forward, with considering the sequence of generations a relay race in which everyone surpasses his predecessor, only to be surpassed by his successor. Without this relay race called history there would be no European art and what characterizes it: a longing for originality, a longing for change. Robespierre, Napoleon, Beethoven, Stalin, Picasso, they're all runners in the relay race, they all belong to the same stadium.

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs.

I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money.

I who have been involved with all styles of painting can assure you that the only things that fluctuate are the waves of fashion which carry the snobs and speculators; the number of true connoisseurs remains more or less the same.

Often while reading a book one feels that the author would have preferred to paint rather than write; one can sense the pleasure he derives from describing a landscape or a person, as if he were painting what he is saying, because deep in his heart he would have preferred to use brushes and colors.

Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.

If you know exactly what you're going to do, what's the good in doing it?;"Pablo Picasso

It means nothing to me. I have no opinion about it, and I don't care.

When I was a child, my mother said to me, 'If you become a soldier, you'll be a general. If you become a monk you'll end up as the pope. 'Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.

My mother said to me, ''If you become a soldier, you'll be a general; if you become a monk you'll end up as the pope.'' Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso. --Pablo Picasso 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.

Father: "What do you think Picasso was saying with this sculpture?" Security guard: "I think he was saying,'Ha ha, Chicago.'

Painting is stronger than I am. It can make me do whatever it wants.

There is a relationship between cartooning and people like Mir= and Picasso which may not be understood by the cartoonist, but it definitely is related even in the early Disney.

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.

Pablo Picasso resisted school stubbornly and seemed completely unable to learn to read or write. To other students grew used to seeing him come late with his pet pigeon -- and with the paintbrush he always carried as if it were an extension of his own body.

Sculpture is the best comment that a painter can make on painting.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

Love is the greatest refreshment in life.

I am always doing things I can't do, that's how I get to do them.

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.

It takes a long time to become young.

If I spit, they will take my spit and frame it as great art.

The people who make art their business are mostly impostors.

Through art we express our conception of what nature is not.

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.

I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful? One must speak of problems in painting!

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.

What might be taken for a precocious genius is the genius of childhood. When the child grows up, it disappears without a trace. It may happen that this boy will become a real painter some day, or even a great painter. But then he will have to begin everything again, from zero.

Every child is an artist. The problem is to remain an artist once they grow up.

Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the present with the past. Neither in countries without a Present nor in those without a Past is it to be encountered. Proust in Venice, Matisse's birdcages overlooking the flower market at Nice, Gide on the seventeenth-century quais of Toulon, Lorca in Granada, Picasso by Saint-Germain-des-PrTs: there lies civilization and for me it can exist only under those liberal regimes in which the Present is alive and therefore capable of assimilating the Past.

I do not seek, I find.

The chief enemy of creativity is good taste.

If everybody is looking for it, then nobody is finding it. If we were cultured, we would not be conscious of lacking culture. We would regard it as something natural and would not make so much fuss about it. And if we knew the real value of this word we would be cultured enough not to give it so much importance.

One does a whole painting for one peach and people think just the opposite -- that particular peach is but a detail.

Disciples be damned. It's not interesting. It's only the masters that matter. Those who create.

Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He recopies it five times, ten times, always clarifying the line. He's convinced that the last, the most stripped down, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and in fact, most of the time, it was the first. In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt.

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.

Drink to me.

It is personality with a penny's worth of talent. Error which chances to rise above the commonplace.