Great Throughts Treasury

"Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely."

"Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which Nature herself is animated."

"Genius only comes to those who know how to use their eyes and their intelligence."

"A mediocre man copying nature will never produce a work of art, because he really looks without seeing, and though he may have noted each detail minutely, the result will be flat and without character... the artist on the contrary, sees; that is to say, his eye, grafted on his heart, reads deeply into the bosom of nature."

"As paradoxical as it may seem a great sculptor is as much a colorist as the best painter, or rather the best engraver. He plays so skillfully with all the resources of relief, he blends so well the boldness of light with the modesty of shadow, that his sculptures please one, as much as the most charming etchings."

"Have pity, mean girl. I can't go on. I can't go another day without seeing you. Atrocious madness, it's the end, I won't be able to work anymore. Malevolent goddess, and yet I love you furiously. (writing to his lover Camille Claudel)"

"How painful it is to find that my figure can be of no help to my future"

"I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need."

"He who is discouraged after a failure is not a real artist."

"I invent nothing, I rediscover."

"I have unbounded admiration for the nude. I worship it like a god."

"I grant you that the artist does not see Nature as she appears to the vulgar, because his emotion reveals to him the hidden truths beneath appearances."

"If the artist only reproduces superficial features as photography does, if he copies the lineaments of a face exactly, without reference to character, he deserves no admiration. The resemblance which he ought to obtain is that of the soul."

"If we now seek the spiritual significance of the technique of Michelangelo we shall find that his sculpture expressed restless energy."

"If the artist succeeds in producing the impression of a movement which takes several moments for accomplishment, his work is certainly much less conventional than the scientific image, where time is abruptly suspended."

"In art, immorality cannot exist. Art is always sacred."

"In front of the model I work with the same will to reproduce truth as if I were making a portrait. I do not correct nature, I incorporate myself into it; it directs me. I can only work with a model. The sight of human forms nourishes and comforts me."

"Inside you there's an artist you don't know about. He's not interested in how things look different in moonlight."

"It is the artist who is truthful and it is photography which lies, for in reality time does not stop, and if the artist succeeds in producing the impression of a movement which takes several moments for accomplishment, his work is certainly much less conventional than the scientific image, where time is abruptly suspended."

"It is truly flesh! You would think it molded by kisses and caresses! You almost expect, when you touch this body, to find it warm. (concerning marble copy of the Venus de' Medici)"

"Man enjoys living on the edge of his dreams and neglects the real things of the world which are so beautiful. The ignorant and indifferent destroy beautiful things merely by looking at the m. (Things that) remake the soul of him who understands them."

"Man's naked form belongs to no particular moment in history; it is eternal, and can be looked upon with joy by the people of all ages."

"My drawings are the result of my sculpture."

"Mystery is like a kind of atmosphere which bathes the greatest works of the masters."

"Nobody does good to man with impunity."

"One must work, nothing but work, and one must have patience."

"Now color... is the flower of fine modeling. These two qualities always accompany each other, and it is these qualities which give to every masterpiece of the sculptor the radiant appearance of living flesh."

"Recently I have taken to isolating limbs, the torso. Why am I blamed for it? Why is the head allowed and not portions of the body? Every part of the human figure is expressive."

"People say I think too much about women, yet, after all what is there more important to think about?"

"Patience is also a form of action."

"Sculpture is quite simply the art of depression and protruberance."

"Sculpture is the art of the hole and the lump."

"The artist is the confidant of nature, flowers carry on dialogues with him through the graceful bending of their stems and the harmoniously tinted nuances of their blossoms. Every flower has a cordial word which nature directs towards him."

"The artist must create a spark before he can make a fire and before art is born, the artist must be ready to be consumed by the fire of his own creation."

"The body always expresses the spirit whose envelope it is. And for him who can see, the nude offers the richest meaning."

"The modes of expression of men of genius differ as much as their souls, and it is impossible to say that in some among them, drawing and color are better or worse than in others."

"There are unknown forces in nature; when we give ourselves wholly to her, without reserve, she lends them to us; she shows us these forms, which our watching eyes do not see, which our intelligence does not understand or suspect."

"The sculptor represents the transition from one pose to another.. he indicates how insensibly the first glides into the second. In his work we still see a part of what was and we discover a part of what is to be."

"The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live. Be a man before being an artist!"

"The only principle in art is to copy what you see. Dealers in aesthetics to the contrary, every other method is fatal."

"To any artist worthy of the name, all in nature is beautiful, because his eyes, fearlessly accepting all exterior truth, read there, as in an open book, all the inner truth."

"There is a continual exchange of ideas between all minds of a generation. Journalists, popular novelists, illustrators, and cartoonists adapt the truths discovered by the powerful intellects for the multitude. It is like a spiritual flood, like a gush that pours into multiple cascades until it forms the great moving sheet of water that stands for the mentality of a period."

"There is nothing ugly in art except that which is without character, that is to say, that which offers no outer or inner truth."

"To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature."

"What is commonly called ugliness in nature can in art become full of beauty."

"What is this drawing? Not once in describing the shape of that mass did I shift my eyes from the model. Why? Because I wanted to be sure that nothing evaded my grasp of it... My objective is to test to what extent my hands already feel what my eyes see."

"What a terrible time this is to be a Christian. The churches have failed and betrayed us, and the ministry preaches hate and murder. If there is a sane and reasoning voice in the Christian church today it is sadly silent."

"Work lovingly done is the secret of all order and all happiness."

"Where did I learn to understand sculpture? In the woods by looking at the trees, along roads by observing the formation of clouds, in the studio by studying the model, everywhere except in the schools."

"Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind which searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which nature herself is animated."