Richard Diebenkorn Quotes

• I don't go into the studio with the idea of 'saying' something. What I do is face the blank canvas and put a few arbitrary marks on it that start me on some sort of dialogue.

  Richard Diebenkorn

  Ideas, Faces, Arbitrary

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• Mistakes can't be erased, but they move you from your present position.

  Richard Diebenkorn

  Mistake, Moving, Position

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• Abstract means literally to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract for he must create his own work from his visual impressions. A realistic or non-objective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts.

  Richard Diebenkorn

  Art, Mean, Differences

  "Richard Diebenkorn".

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• In a successful painting everything is integral - all the parts belong to the whole. If you remove an aspect or element you are removing its wholeness.

  Richard Diebenkorn

  Successful, Elements, Painting

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• All paintings start out of a mood, out of a relationship with things or people, out of a complete visual impression

  Richard Diebenkorn

  People, Painting, Mood

  Richard Diebenkorn (1964). “Richard Diebenkorn: Washington Gallery of Modern Art, Washington, D.C., November 6 to December 31, 1964; the Jewish Museum, New York, January 13 to February 21, 1965; Pavilion Gallery, Newport Beach, California, March 14 to April 15, 1965”

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• I can never accomplish what I want - only what I would have wanted had I thought of it beforehand.

  Richard Diebenkorn

  Want, Accomplish, Ability

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• All paintings start out of a mood, out of a relationship with things or people, out of a complete visual impression. To call this expression abstract seems to me often to confuse the issue. Abstract means literally to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract . . . a realistic or non-objective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts.

  Richard Diebenkorn

  Mean, Artist, Expression

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• Attempt what is not certain. Certainty may or may not come later. It may then be a valuable delusion.

  Richard Diebenkorn

  May, Certain, Delusion

  Richard Diebenkorn, John McEnroe, Jane Livingston, Barnaby Conrad (2003). “Richard Diebenkorn: figurative works on paper”, Chronicle Books

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• Do search, but in order to find other than what is searched for.

  Richard Diebenkorn

  Order

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• If you get an image try to destroy it.

  Richard Diebenkorn

  Imagination, Trying, Ifs

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• I came to mistrust my desire to explode the picture and supercharge it in some way… what is more important is a feeling of strength in reserve – tension beneath calm.

  Richard Diebenkorn

  Feelings, Important, Desire

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• I would like the colors, their shapes and positions to be arrived at in response to and dictated by the condition of the total space at the time they are considered.

  Richard Diebenkorn

  Space, Color, Shapes

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• When I am halfway there with a painting, it can occasionally be thrilling... But it happens very rarely; usually it's agony... I go to great pains to mask the agony. But the struggle is there. It's the invisible enemy.

  Richard Diebenkorn

  Art, Pain, Struggle

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• My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful, the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles.

  Richard Diebenkorn

  Meaningful, Fields, Limits

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• I have found in my still-life work that I seem to be able to tell what objects are important to me by what tends to stay in the painting as it develops.

  Richard Diebenkorn

  Important, Able, Painting

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• My freedom consists in my moving about within the narrow frame that I have assigned myself for each one of my undertakings.

  Richard Diebenkorn

  Moving, Undertakings

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• Don't be a Pollyanna!

  Richard Diebenkorn

  Courage, Pollyanna

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• I want painting to be difficult to do.

  Richard Diebenkorn

  Want, Painting, Difficult

  "Richard Diebenkorn and the colours of California" by Olivia Laing, www.theguardian.com. February 28, 2015.

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• One wants to see the artifice of the thing as well as the subject.

  Richard Diebenkorn

  Want, Wells, Artifice

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• Use and respond to the initial fresh qualities but consider them absolutely expendable.

  Richard Diebenkorn

  Quality, Use, Expendables

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• Somehow don't be bored, but if you must, use it in action. Use its destructive potential.

  Richard Diebenkorn

  Bored, Use, Action

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• My father didn't think being an artist was a respectable or worthy goal for a man. He hoped I would see my way to more serious work and would find myself turning towards medicine, law, or business.

  Richard Diebenkorn

  Father, Men, Thinking

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• Don't 'discover' a subject of any kind.

  Richard Diebenkorn

  Kind, Subjects

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• I keep plastering it until it comes around to what I want, in terms of all I know and think about painting now, as well as in terms of the initial observation.

  Richard Diebenkorn

  Thinking, Want, Painting

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• Maybe the given person, cup, or landscape is lost before one gets to painting. A figure exerts a continuing and unspecified influence on a painting as the canvas develops. The represented forms are loaded with psychological feeling. It can't ever just be painting.

  Richard Diebenkorn

  Feelings, Landscape, Cups

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