Painter Quotes - Page 24

• An aged painter cannot help but accept the fact that his work belongs in the past. Younger painters have leaped into the phenomenon called contemporary, where it would be foolish of me to try to enter. But I can claim my own phenomenon.

  Joseph Plaskett

  Past, Trying, Would Be

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• In Germany, we often hear the absurd complaint that museums don't have the money to buy paintings. Of course, I'm not talking about me and my paintings. There are, after all, more popular painters in this country.

  Georg Baselitz

  Country, Talking, Museums

  "My Paintings are Battles". Interview with Susanne Beyer, Ulrike Knöfel, www.spiegel.de. January 25, 2013.

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• To me there is no past or future in my art. If a work of art cannot live always in the present it must not be considered at all. The art of the Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past; perhaps it is more alive today than it ever was.

  Pablo Picasso

  Art, Past, Greek

  Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Sarah Campbell Blaffer Gallery (1975). “Picasso, Braque, Léger: masterpieces from Swiss collections”

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• Poets like painters, thus unskilled to trace The naked nature and the living grace, With gold and jewels cover ev'ry part, And hide with ornaments their want of art. True wit is Nature to advantage dressed, What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.

  Alexander Pope

  Art, Jewels, Grace

  An Essay on Criticism l. 297 (1711)

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• Lazy Line Painter Jane - it was an insane way to make a record! It was just in a church hall, no separate rooms for instruments, and a crappy digital desk, and I think it's fantastic. I think it's one of the best records we ever made. But if you actually said that to a professional recording engineer or producer they'd laugh at you.

  Stevie Jackson

  Thinking, Laughing, Lazy

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• All inspired painters are impressionists, even though it be true that some impressionists are not inspired.

  Joaquin Sorolla

  Inspired, Being True, Impressionism

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• If ever a painter wrought a miracle of illusion with brush and pigment that painter was Velazquez in his Las Meninas, at the Prado in Madrid.

  Joaquin Sorolla

  Miracle, Madrid, Illusion

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• When an artist begins to count strokes instead of regarding nature he is lost. This preoccupation with technique, at the expense of truth and sincerity, is the principal fault I find in much of the work of modern painters.

  Joaquin Sorolla

  Artist, Technique, Faults

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• It has always been difficult for historians to fully grasp the intelligence of painters.

  Dore Ashton

  Difficult, Intellect, Historian

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• The... promptitude with which many painters, on arriving at an entirely new and unfamiliar place, settle down to work at once, never fails to astonish me: it seems indecent, like button-holing a complete stranger.

  Augustus John

  Buttons, Arriving, Failing

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• One thing about being a painter is that if you have a dog you are naturally going to spend a lot of time with him or her. It has always amazed me the closeness of that relationship even though a word was never spoken, intellect not any part of it.

  Ken Gillespie

  Dog, Intellect, Amazed

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• The poet and the painter are only truly great by the mutual influences of their studies, and the jealousy of glory has only produced an idle contest.

  Isaac D'Israeli

  Study, Influence, Glory

  "The Literary Character, Illustrated by the History of Men of Genius". Book by Isaac D'Israeli, en.wikiquote.org. 1795 - 1822.

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• The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerises some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Canvas, Idiot, Staring

  Vincent van Gogh (2014). “Delphi Complete Works of Vincent van Gogh (Illustrated)”, p.2333, Delphi Classics

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• Decade after decade, artists came to paint the light of Provincetown, and comparisons were made to the lagoons of Venice and the marshes of Holland, but then the summer ended and most of the painters left, and the long dingy undergarment of the gray New England winter, gray as the spirit of my mood, came down to visit.

  Norman Mailer

  Summer, Winter, Artist

  Norman Mailer (2013). “Tough Guys Don't Dance: A Novel”, p.11, Random House

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• Painters and sculptors under the Nazis often depicted the nude, but they were forbidden to show any bodily imperfections. Their nudes look like pictures in physique magazines: pinups which are both sanctimoniously asexual and (in a technical sense) pornographic, for they have the perfection of a fantasy.

  Susan Sontag

  Perfection, Looks, Magazines

  Susan Sontag (1983). “A Susan Sontag reader”, Vintage

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• It is impossible to repeat in one period what was done in another.The pointof view isnotthesame, anymorethan are the tools, the ideals, the needs, or the painters' techniques.

  Pierre-Auguste Renoir

  Views, Technique, Needs

  FromRenoir's notebook, quoted in L Nochlin Impressionism and Post-Impressionism1874-1904 (1966).

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• Berthe Morisot was a painter full of eighteenth-century delicacy and grace; in a word, the last elegant and 'feminine' artists since Fragonard.

  Pierre-Auguste Renoir

  Artist, Grace, Delicacy

  "Renoir: His Life and Work". Book by François Fosca, p. 175, 1975.

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• You haven't time to think about the composition. In working directly from nature, the painter ends up by simply aiming at an effect, and not composing the picture at all; and he soon becomes monotonous.

  Pierre-Auguste Renoir

  Thinking, Ends, Composing

  "Renoir: His Life and Work". Book by François Fosca, p. 176, 1975.

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• Most important... develop your technical ability. You are handicapped if you do not develop well enough to hold the subconscious process so as not to have problems of inexperienced painters.

  Sergei Bongart

  Important, Problem, Enough

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• As a painter, I realized that what we see is just manifestation of unseen power. Since then [1958 Coup in Iraq], reality started to take another form in my mind. Hence, I was aware of deception of our senses.

  Ala Bashir

  Reality, Iraq, Mind

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• A piece of drapery is like a necktie, hot stuff to paint, and one of the easiest things for a painter to kid himself into thinking he can do. Don't be fooled by the color. Go after the shape and character. Hew the forms together with colored tones.

  John French Sloan

  Character, Kids, Thinking

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• Painters love paint itself: so much that they spend years trying to get paint to behave the way they want it to.

  James Elkins

  Years, Trying, Want

  James Elkins (2004). “What Painting Is”, p.187, Routledge

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• A painter knows what to do by the tug of the brush as it pulls through a mixture of oils, and by the look of coloured slurries on the palette.

  James Elkins

  Oil, Mixtures, Looks

  James Elkins (2004). “What Painting Is”, p.8, Routledge

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• As the decades go by, a painter's life becomes a life lived with oil paint, a story told in the thicknesses of oil. Any history of painting that does not take that obsession seriously is incomplete.

  James Elkins

  Oil, Doe, Stories

  James Elkins (2004). “What Painting Is”, p.5, Routledge

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• To a nonpainter, oil paint is uninteresting and faintly unpleasant. To a painter, it is the life's blood: a substance so utterly entrancing, infuriating, and ravishingly beautiful that it makes it worthwhile to go back into the studio every morning, year after year, for an entire lifetime.

  James Elkins

  Beautiful, Morning, Blood

  James Elkins (2004). “What Painting Is”, p.4, Routledge

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