Romare Bearden Quotes

• You should always respect what you are and your culture because if your art is going to mean anything, that is where it comes from.

  Romare Bearden

  Respect, Art, Mean

  96 Copy quote

• Black art has always existed. It just hasn't been looked for in the right places.

  Romare Bearden

  Art, Black, Black Art

  48 Copy quote

• You don't paint what you see, you paint what you feel.

  Romare Bearden

  Paint, Feels

  35 Copy quote

• Art is the soul of a people.

  Romare Bearden

  Art, People, Soul

  45 Copy quote

• The artist confronts chaos. The whole thing of art is, how do you organize chaos?

  Romare Bearden

  Art, Chaos, Organize

  42 Copy quote

• The artist has to be something like a whale swimming with his mouth wide open, absorbing everything until he has what he really needs.

  Romare Bearden

  Swimming, Artist, Whales

  Myron Schwartzman, Romare Bearden (1990). “Romare Bearden, his life & art”, Harry N. Abrams

  47 Copy quote

• My purpose is to paint the life of my people as I know it.

  Romare Bearden

  People, Purpose, Paint

  30 Copy quote

• When I conjure these memories, they are of the present to me, because after all, the artist is a kind of enchanter in time.

  Romare Bearden

  Time, Memories, Artist

  72 Copy quote

• If you're any kind of artist, you make a miraculous journey, and you come back and make some statements in shapes and colors of where you were.

  Romare Bearden

  Journey, Artist, Color

  25 Copy quote

• What I've attempted to do is establish a world through art in which the validity of my Negro experience could live and make its own logic.

  Romare Bearden

  Art, World, Logic

  Romare Bearden (1968). “Romare Bearden: Paintings and Projections”

  49 Copy quote

• You put down one color and it calls for an answer. You have to look at it like a melody.

  Romare Bearden

  Color, Looks, Answers

  Myron Schwartzman, Romare Bearden (1990). “Romare Bearden, his life & art”, Harry N. Abrams

  29 Copy quote

• Practically all great artists accept the influence of others. But... the artist with vision sees his material, chooses, changes, and by integrating what he has learned with his own experiences, finally molds something distinctly personnel.

  Romare Bearden

  Artist, Vision, Mold

  30 Copy quote

• It was not my aim to paint about the Negro in America in terms of propaganda. It is to depict the life of my people as I know it, passionately and dispassionately as Brueghel.

  Romare Bearden

  America, People, Propaganda

  Romare Bearden (1991). “Romare Bearden: The Human Condition : [exhibition] October 3-October 26, 1991”

  26 Copy quote

• Sometimes the mind relives things very clearly for us...There are roads out of secret places within us along which we all must move as we go to touch others.

  Romare Bearden

  Moving, Secret Places, Mind

  38 Copy quote

• The essence of art is to recapturel the fantasy and the imagination of a child again, but without the innocence of a child.

  Romare Bearden

  Art, Children, Essence

  16 Copy quote

• But no one, when you stop to think, has ever equated abstract expressionism as a movement with jazz music. It's based on improvisation. The rhythms, the personal involvement, all of this is part of the jazz experience.

  Romare Bearden

  Thinking, Movement, Jazz

  30 Copy quote

• I want to see how life can triumph.

  Romare Bearden

  Triumph, Want

  17 Copy quote

• Painting is the act of discovery and you're constantly enlarging your horizon or finding yourself every time you paint.

  Romare Bearden

  Discovery, Finding Yourself, Horizon

  21 Copy quote

• The function of the artist is to organize the facets of life according to his imagination.

  Romare Bearden

  Life, Artist, Imagination

  Romare Bearden (2003). “The Art of Romare Bearden”, Harry N Abrams Incorporated

  20 Copy quote

• Memory embellishes Life. Forgetfulness makes it possible.

  Romare Bearden

  Memories, Forgetfulness

  19 Copy quote

• Painting is a self-disciplined activity that you have to learn by yourself.

  Romare Bearden

  Self, Painting, Activity

  37 Copy quote

• Painting and art cannot be taught. You can save time if someone tells you to put blue and yellow together to make green, but the essence of painting is a self-disciplined activity that you have to learn by yourself.

  Romare Bearden

  Art, Essence, Yellow

  21 Copy quote

• Every artist wants his work to be permanent. But what is? The Aswan Dam covered some of the greatest art in the world. Venice is sinking. Great books and pictures were lost in the Florence floods. In the meantime we still enjoy butterflies.

  Romare Bearden

  Happiness, Time, Art

  26 Copy quote

• The most difficult object in painting is yourself because you're always at issue

  Romare Bearden

  Issues, Painting, Difficult

  Romare Bearden (1989). “Romare Bearden, 1911-1988: A Memorial Exhibition”, Aca Galleries

  11 Copy quote

• The artist has to be exactly the opposite [of people singing the song, I've gotta be Me,] and transcend himself as he makes judgements.

  Romare Bearden

  Song, Artist, Opposites

  11 Copy quote

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