Robert Motherwell Quotes - Page 2

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Art Feelings Painting Wine

It may be that the deep necessity of art is the examination of individual's and society's self-deception.

Robert Motherwell

Art, Self, Deception

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One of the most striking aspects of abstract art's appearance is her nakedness, an art stripped bare.

Robert Motherwell

Art, Appearance, Abstract

"The Writings of Robert Motherwell".

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I have been continuously aware that in painting, I am always dealing with... a relational structure. Which in turn makes permission 'to be abstract' no problem at all.

Robert Motherwell

Painting, Problem, Abstract

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For twenty years I read a book a day, from the time I was seven until I was twenty-seven.

Robert Motherwell

Book, Years, Twenties

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Most painting in the European tradition was painting the mask. Modern art rejected all that. Our subject matter was the person behind the mask.

Robert Motherwell

Art, Matter, Painting

"The Times", November 17, 1985.

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I dislike a picture that is too suave or too skilfully done. But, contrariwise, I also dislike a picture that looks too inept or blundering.

Robert Motherwell

Looks, Done, Suave

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In a way, painting is like wine: it is as old, as simple, as primitive and as varied. Like wine, it is a very specific means of expression, with a limited vocabulary, but vast in its expressive potential.

Robert Motherwell

Wine, Mean, Simple

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Abstract expressionism was the first American art that was filled with anger as well as beauty.

Robert Motherwell

Art, Firsts, Abstract

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For me, the sketchbooks are more like a secret and wholly spontaneous jeu d'esprit and some of them I like as much as anything I have ever done. They are invariably without premeditation. I mean not only that I have no plan when I make them, I also have no plan to make them.

Robert Motherwell

Mean, Drawing, Secret

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I never had the... common anxiety as to whether abstract painting had a given 'meaning.

Robert Motherwell

Anxiety, Abstract Painting, Common

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The abstractness of modern art has to do with how much an enlightened mind rejects of the contemporary social order.

Robert Motherwell

Art, Order, Mind

Robert Motherwell (1999). “The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell”

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Nothing as drastic an innovation as abstract art could have come in to existence, save as the consequence of a most profound, relentless, unquenchable need. The need is for felt experience - intense, immediate, direct, subtle, unified, warm, vivid, rhythmic.

Robert Motherwell

Art, Profound, Innovation

Robert Motherwell (1999). “The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell”

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It is the medium, or the specific configuration of the medium, that we call a work of art that brings feeling into being.

Robert Motherwell

Art, Feelings, Being Me

Robert Motherwell (1999). “The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell”

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It is true that every artist has his own religion.

Robert Motherwell

Artist

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For a painter as abstract as myself, the collages offer a way of incorporating bits of the everyday world into pictures.

Robert Motherwell

Everyday, World, Way

Siri Engberg, Joan Banach, Robert Motherwell, Walker Art Center (2003). “Robert Motherwell: the Complete Prints 1940-1991: Catalogue Raisonne”, p.21, Hudson Hills

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To end up with a canvas that is no less beautiful than the empty canvas is to begin with.

Robert Motherwell

Beautiful, Canvas, Empty

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Sometimes images may emerge from some chord in my subconscious, the way a dream might. Even in those paintings where an image unconsciously develops, a certain kind of experience is usually necessary in order to perceive it.

Robert Motherwell

Dream, Order, Perception

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In printmaking, I essentially use the same process as in painting with one important exception ... to try, with sensitivity to the medium to emphasize what printing can do best ... better than say, painting or collaging or watercolour or drawing or whatever ... Otherwise, the artist expresses the same vision in graphics that he does in his other work.

Robert Motherwell

Artist, Drawing, Vision

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An odd contradiction, if the layman were correct in his unconscious assumption that an artist begins with reality and ends with art: the converse is true - to the degree that this dichotomy has any truth - the artist begins with art, and through it arrives at reality.

Robert Motherwell

Art, Reality, Degrees

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Every picture one paints involves not painting others.

Robert Motherwell

Choices, Painting, Paint

Robert Motherwell (1999). “The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell”

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Any incentive to paint is as good as any other. There is no poor subject.

Robert Motherwell

Incentives, Poor, Paint

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To pick up a cigarette wrapper or wine label or an old letter or the end of a carton is my way of dealing with those things that do not originate in me, in my I.

Robert Motherwell

Wine, Labels, Letters

Robert Motherwell, David Rosand (1997). “Robert Motherwell on paper: drawings, prints, collages”, Harry N Abrams Inc

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The public's appetite for famous people is a mouth as big as a mountain.

Robert Motherwell

People, Mountain, Mouths

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In the brush doing what it is doing, it will stumble on what one could not do by oneself.

Robert Motherwell

Brushes, Oneself

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A main part of the struggle of art has been to make an art that is direct, simple, humane, unconnected with powers that be in their essence... To the degree that it is connected with the bourgeoisie via the marketplace and so on is not necessarily an artist's problem.

Robert Motherwell

Art, Struggle, Simple

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Born: January 24, 1915
Died: July 16, 1991
Occupation: Painter
Cite this Page: Citation

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