Willem de Kooning Quotes

Quotes about:

• I have to change to stay the same.

  Willem de Kooning

  Barbara Hess, Willem De Kooning (2004). “Willem de Kooning, 1904-1997: Content as a Glimpse”, p.79, Taschen

  82 Copy quote

• I'm not interested in 'abstracting' or taking things out or reducing painting to design, form, line, and color. I paint this way because I can keep putting more things in it - drama, anger, pain, love, a figure, a horse, my ideas about space. Through your eyes it again becomes an emotion or idea.

  Willem de Kooning

  Horse, Pain, Drama

  53 Copy quote

• I might work on a painting for a month, but it has too look like I painted it in a minute.

  Willem de Kooning

  Looks, Might, Months

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• I don't paint to live, I live to paint.

  Willem de Kooning

  Art, Passion, Paint

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• The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves.

  Willem de Kooning

  Art, Attitude, Thinking

  Willem De Kooning, John Elderfield, Lauren Mahony (2011). “De Kooning: A Retrospective”, p.192, The Museum of Modern Art

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• What you do when you paint, you take a brush full of paint, get paint on the picture, and you have faith.

  Willem de Kooning

  Have Faith, Paint, Brushes

  Willem De Kooning, John Elderfield, Lauren Mahony (2011). “De Kooning: A Retrospective”, p.17, The Museum of Modern Art

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• I paint the way I do because I can keep on putting more and more things in - like drama, pain, anger, love, a figure, a horse, my ideas of space. It doesn't matter if it differs from mine, as long as it comes from the painting, which has its own integrity and intensity.

  Willem de Kooning

  Horse, Pain, Integrity

  59 Copy quote

• The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.

  Willem de Kooning

  Time, Poverty, Trouble

  111 Copy quote

• Every so often, a painter has to destroy painting. Cezanne did it, Picasso did it with Cubism. Then Pollock did it. He busted our idea of a picture all to hell. Then there could be new paintings again.

  Willem de Kooning

  Ideas, Cezanne, Painting

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• The drawings that interest me most are made with closed eyes. With eyes closed, I feel my hand slide down on the paper. I have an image in mind, but the results always surprise me.

  Willem de Kooning

  Eye, Hands, Drawing

  47 Copy quote

• I'd like to get all the colors in the world into one painting

  Willem de Kooning

  Color, World, Painting

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• You have to keep on the very edge of something, all the time, or the picture dies.

  Willem de Kooning

  Dies, Edges

  10 Copy quote

• Not even for a million dollars would I paint a tree.

  Willem de Kooning

  Tree, Dollars, Paint

  35 Copy quote

• Even abstract shapes must have a likeness

  Willem de Kooning

  Shapes, Abstract

  Willem De Kooning, John Elderfield, Lauren Mahony (2011). “De Kooning: A Retrospective”, p.13, The Museum of Modern Art

  26 Copy quote

• The texture of experience is prior to everything else.

  Willem de Kooning

  Texture

  "Abstract Expressionism and Other Modern Works". Book by David Anfam, p. 150, 1990.

  20 Copy quote

• Content is a glimpse of something, an encounter like a flash. It's very tiny - very tiny. Content.

  Willem de Kooning

  Encounters, Glimpse, Tiny

  Barbara Hess, Willem De Kooning (2004). “Willem de Kooning, 1904-1997: Content as a Glimpse”, p.74, Taschen

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• Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented

  Willem de Kooning

  Oil, Flesh, Reason Why

  Quoted in N.Y. Times, 14 Oct. 1974

  8 Copy quote

• Whatever an artist's personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical. He acts from or upon other artists. An artist is someone who makes art too. He did not invent it. How it started — "to hell with it." It is obvious that it has no progress. The idea of space is given him to change if he can. The subject matter in the abstract is space. He fills it with an attitude. The attitude never comes from himself alone.

  Willem de Kooning

  Attitude, Artist, Space

  "Willem de Kooning: Pittsburgh International Series, October 26, 1979-January 6, 1980, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute".

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• The past does not influence me; I influence it.

  Willem de Kooning

  Inspirational, Motivational, Past

  "Bloodroot" by Seth Colter Walls, pitchfork.com. April 20, 2017.

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• Style is a fraud. I always felt the Greeks were hiding behind their columns.

  Willem de Kooning

  Hype, Greek, Style

  1949 'A Desperate View', lecture given in NewYork.

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• Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure. I always seem to be wrapped in the melodrama of vulgarity. I do not think... of art as a situation of comfort.

  Willem de Kooning

  Art, Thinking, Peaceful

  Willem De Kooning (1979). “Willem de Kooning: Pittsburgh International Series, October 26, 1979-January 6, 1980, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute”

  6 Copy quote

• I make pictures and someone comes in and calls it art.

  Willem de Kooning

  Art

  28 Copy quote

• If I stretch my arms and wonder where my fingers are - that is all the space I need as a painter.

  Willem de Kooning

  Space, Needs, Arms

  Willem De Kooning, John Elderfield, Lauren Mahony (2011). “De Kooning: A Retrospective”, p.135, The Museum of Modern Art

  8 Copy quote

• Yes, I am influenced by everbody. But every time I put my hands in my pockets I find someone else's fingers there.

  Willem de Kooning

  Hands, Pockets, Fingers

  Willem De Kooning, Bernhard Bürgi, Klaus Kertess, Ralph Ubl, Öffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel (2005). “De Kooning: paintings, 1960-1980”, Cantz

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• Content is a glimpse.

  Willem de Kooning

  Vision, Glimpse, Awe

  Willem De Kooning (2001). “Willem De Kooning: Vellums : March 21-April 21, 2001”, Mitchell-Inness & Nash

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