|
Kasimir
Malevich
(1878-1935) |
A
face painted in a picture gives a pitiful parody of life. . .
but a painted surface lives. |
|
Chris
Martin |
Abstract
painting is dead. That’s why it has become so
interesting again. (2007) |
|
Henri
Matisse |
If I
close my eyes, I see things better than with my eyes open. |
|
Henri
Matisse |
The
splitting up of color [as Impressionists did] brought the splitting
up of form
and contour . . . Everything is reduced to a mere sensation of
the retina, but
one which destroys all tranquility of surface and contour.
Objects are differentiated only by the luminosity that is
given them. |
|
Henri
Matisse |
I
don't paint women, I paint pictures. . . What I am after above
all is expression. If in a portrait I put eyes, a nose, a
mouth, there isn't much use; on the contrary it paralyses the
imagination of the spectator, and obliges us to see the person
in a certain way. |
|
Henri
Matisse |
I
have always tried to hide my own efforts and wished my works to
have the lightness and joyousness of a springtime which never
lets anyone suspect the labors it cost. |
|
Henri
Matisse |
You
want to paint? First of all you must cut off your tongue
because your decision takes away from you the right to express
yourself with anything but your brush. |
|
Henri
Matisse |
What
I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid
of troubling or depressing subject matter, an art which might be
for every mental worker, be he businessman or writer, like an
appeasing influence, like a mental soother, something like a
good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue. |
|
Henri
Matisse |
Beauty
comes from the balance between two and three dimensions, between
abstraction and representation - I seek the equilibrium behind
changing appearances. |
|
Somerset
Maugham |
It
is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything
but the best, you very often get it. |
|
David
McCullough |
Each
generation, we peel back biases that have blinded those before
us. The more we know about the past enables us to ask
richer and more provocative questions about who we are
today.
(Quoted in American Heritage winter 2008) |
|
H.L.
Mencken |
Explanations
exist: they have existed for all times, for there is always an
easy solution to every problem -- neat, plausible and wrong. |
|
Michelangelo
(1475-1564) |
A
man paints with his brains not with his hands. |
|
Henry
Miller |
Art
teaches nothing, except the significance of life. |
|
Carl
Milles |
Nothing
is ugly except stupidity. |
|
Piet
Mondrian |
I
don't want pictures, I want to find things out. |
|
Claude
Monet |
Everyone
discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were
necessary
to understand, when it is simply necessary to love. |
|
Claude
Monet |
I
want to grasp the intangible. It's terrible how the light
runs out, taking color with it. Color, any color, lasts a
second, sometimes three or four minutes at the most. [Said
to Rene Gimpel, August 19, 1918] |
|
Claude
Monet |
When
you go out to paint try to forget what objects you have before
you
- a tree, a pond, a bridge - merely think, here is a little
square of blue, here an oblong of pink, a
streak of yellow and paint it just as it looks to you. . . till
it gives your own naive impression of the scene before
you. |
|
Claude
Monet |
Each
evening Manet and his friends met after the day's work in the
studio ended. . . Nothing could be more interesting than
the talks we had, with their perpetual clashes of opinion. . .
You always went home afterwards better steeled for the day, with
a new sense of purpose and a clearer head. |
|
Henry
Moore |
A
sculptor is a person obsessed with the form and shape of things. |
|
Henry
Moore |
If
an artist tries consciously to do something to others, it is to
stretch their eyes, their thoughts, to something they would not
see or feel if the artist had not done it. To do this,
first he has to stretch his own first. form and shape of things. |
|
Henry
Moore |
The
first hole is a revelation. |
|
Gustave
Moreau |
I
believe only in what I do not see. |
|
John
Viscount Morley |
You have not converted a man because you have silenced him. |
|
Edvard
Munch
(1863-1944) |
Just
as Leonardo da Vinci studied human anatomy and dissected
corpses, so I
try to dissect souls. |
