Great Throughts Treasury

"It is my dream to create an art which is filled with balance, purity and calmness, freed from a subject matter that is disconcerting or too attention-seeking. In my paintings, I wish to create a spiritual remedy, similar to a comfortable armchair which provides rest from physical expectation for the spiritually working, the businessman as well as the artist."

"It is not enough to place colors, however beautiful, one beside the other; colors must also react on one another. Otherwise, you have cacophony."

"It is only after years of preparation that the young [artist] should touch color ? not color used descriptively, that is, but as a means of personal expression."

"It is through the human figure that I best succeed in expressing the nearly religious feeling that I have towards life."

"Jazz is rhythm and meaning."

"Love wants to rise, not to be held down by anything base... He who loves flies, runs, and rejoices; he is free and nothing holds him back. Derive happiness from yourself, from a good day's work, from the clearing that it makes in the fog that surrounds us."

"My choice of colors does not rest on any scientific theory; it is based on observation, on feeling, on the very nature of each experience. I? ?merely try to find a color that will fit my sensation. There is an impelling proportion of tones that can induce me to change the shape of a figure or to transform my composition. Until I have achieved this proportion in all the parts of the composition I strive towards it and keep on working. Then a moment comes when every part has found its definite relationship, and from then on it would be impossible for me to add a stroke to my picture without having to paint it all over again."

"My curves are not crazy."

"My models, my human figures, are never like extras in an interior. They are the main theme of my work. I depend absolutely on my model."

"My mother liked everything I did. It is from her affection for her that I always drew what theory failed to offer me per finish the painting."

"Never ruin a good painting with the truth."

"Nothing can be accomplished without love."

"One gets into a state of creativity by conscious work."

"Perhaps I might be satisfied, momentarily, with a work finished at one sitting, but I would soon get bored looking at it; therefore, I prefer to continue working on it so that later I may recognize it as a work of my mind."

"Perhaps what we call perfection in art... is no more than the sense of wanting or finding in a human work that certainty of execution, that inner necessity, that indissoluble, reciprocal union between design and matter, which I find in the humblest seashell."

"Purer colors... have in themselves, independently of the objects they serve to express, a significant action on the feelings of those who look at them."

"Put a color upon a canvas - it not only colors with that color the part of the canvas to which the color has been applied, but it also colors the surrounding space with the complementary."

"Remember, a line cannot exist alone; it always brings a companion along. Do remember that one line does nothing; it is only in relation to another that it creates a volume."

"Rules have no existence outside of individuals: otherwise a good professor would be as great a genius as Racine."

"Seek the strongest color effect possible ... the content is of no importance."

"Slowly I discovered the secret of my art. It consists of a meditation on nature, on the expression of a dream which is always inspired by reality. With more involvement and regularity, I learned to push each study in a certain direction. Little by little the notion that painting is a means of expression asserted itself, and that one can express the same thing in several ways. Exactitude is not truth, Delacroix liked to say."

"Some may say that other views on painting were expected from a painter, and that I have only come out with platitudes. To this I shall reply that there are no new truths. The role of the artist, like that of the scholar, consists of seizing current truths often repeated to him, but which will take on new meaning for him and which he will make his own when he has grasped their deepest significance. If aviators had to explain to us the research which led to their leaving earth and rising in the air, they would merely confirm very elementary principles of physics neglected by less successful inventors. An artist always profits from information about himself, and I am glad to have learned what is my weak point. M. P‚ladan in the Revue H‚bdomadaire reproaches a certain number of painters, amongst whom I think I should place myself, for calling themselves ?Fauves,? and yet dressing like everyone else, so that they are no more noticeable than the floor-walkers in a department store. Does genius count for so little? If it were only a question of myself that would set M. P‚ladan?s mind at ease, tomorrow I would call myself Sar and dress like a necromancer. In the same article this excellent writer claims that I do not paint honestly, and I would be justifiably angry if he had not qualified his statement by saying, ?I mean honestly with respect to the ideal and the rules.? The trouble is that he does not mention where these rules are. I am willing to have them exist, but were it possible to learn them what sublime artists we would have!"

"Springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me."

"Suppose I want to paint a woman's body: first of all I imbue it with grace and charm, but I know that I must give something more. I will condense the meaning of this body by seeking its essential lines. The charm will be less apparent at first glance, but it must eventually emerge from the new image which will have a broader meaning, one more fully human."

"Starting to paint, I felt gloriously free, quiet, and alone."

"The artist begins with a vision ? a creative operation requiring effort. Creativity takes courage."

"The artist has to look at life as he did when he was a child. If he loses that faculty, he cannot express himself in an original, that is, a personal way."

"The chief aim of color should be to serve expression as well as possible. I put down my colors without a preconceived plan. If at the first step and perhaps without my being conscious of it one tone has particularly pleased me, more often than not when the picture is finished, I will notice that I have respected this tone while I have progressively altered and transformed the others. I discover the quality of colors in a purely instinctive way."

"The chief function of color should be to serve expression."

"The effort to see things without distortion takes something like courage and this courage is essential to the artist, who has to look at everything as though he saw it for the first time."

"The essential thing is to spring forth, to express the bolt of lightning one senses upon contact with a thing. The function of the artist is not to translate an observation but to express the shock of the object on his nature; the shock, with the original reaction."

"The future painter must feel what is useful for his development ? drawing or even sculpture everything that will let him become one with Nature, identify himself with her, by entering into the things ? which is what I call Nature ? that arouse his feelings. I believe study by means of drawing is most essential. If drawing is of the Spirit and color of the Senses, you must draw first, to cultivate the spirit and to be able to lead color into spiritual paths."

"The importance of an artist is to be measured by the quantity of new signs which he has introduced to the language of art."

"The living model, the naked body of a woman, is the privileged seat of feeling, but also of questioning... The model must mark you, awaken in you an emotion which you seek in turn to express."

"The model for me is a touchstone, it is a door which I must break open in order to reach the garden in which I am alone and feel good, even the model exists only for what use I can make of it."

"The portrait is one of the most curious art forms. It demands special qualities in the artist, and an almost total kinship with the model."

"The residuum of another's expression can never be related to one's own feeling."

"The sign for which I forge an image has no value if it doesn't harmonize with other signs, which I must determine in the course of my invention and which are completely peculiar to it."

"The sign is determined at the moment I use it and for the object of which it must form a part. For this reason I cannot determine in advance signs which never change, and which would be like writing: that would paralyze the freedom of my invention."

"The simplest means are those which best enable an artist to express himself. If he fears the banal he cannot avoid it by appearing strange, or going in for bizarre drawing and eccentric color. His means of expression must derive almost of necessity from his temperament. He must have the humility of mind to believe that he has painted only what he has seen. I like Chardin?s way of expressing it: ?I apply color until there is a resemblance.? Or C‚zanne?s: ?I want to secure a likeness,? or Rodin?s: ?Copy nature!? Leonardo said: ?He who can copy can create.? Those who work in a preconceived style, deliberately turning their backs on nature, miss the truth. An artist must recognize, when he is reasoning, that his picture is an artifice; but when he is painting, he should feel that he has copied nature. And even when he departs from nature, he must do it with the conviction that it is only to interpret her more fully."

"The things that are acquired consciously permit us to express ourselves unconsciously with a certain richness."

"The use of expressive colors is felt to be one of the basic elements of the modern mentality, a historical necessity, beyond choice."

"The vertical is in my spirit. It helps me to define precisely the direction of lines, and in quick sketches I never indicate a curve, that of a branch in landscape for example, without being aware of its relationship to the vertical. My curves are not mad."

"The wall around the window does not create two worlds."

"The whole arrangement of my picture is expressive. The place occupied by the figures or objects, the empty spaces around them, the proportions, everything plays a part."

"There are always flowers for those who want to see them."

"There is an impelling proportion of tones that may lead me to change the shape of a figure or to transform my composition. Until I have achieved this proportion in all the parts of a composition I strive towards it and keep on working. Then a moment comes when all the parts have found their definite relationships, and from then on it would be impossible for me to add a stroke to my picture without having to repaint it entirely."

"There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted."

"There must result a living harmony of colors, a harmony analogous to that of a musical composition."

"There was a time when I never left my paintings hanging on the wall because they reminded me of moments of over-excitement and I did not like to see them again when I was calm. Nowadays I try to put serenity into my pictures and rework them as long as I have not succeeded. Suppose I want to paint a woman?s body: first of all I imbue it with grace and charm, but I know that I must give something more. I will condense the meaning of this body by seeking its essential lines. The charm will be less apparent at first glance, but it must eventually emerge from the new image which will have a broader meaning, one more fully human. The charm will be less striking since it will not be the sole quality of the painting, but it will not exist less for its being contained within the general conception of the figure. Charm, lightness, freshness?such fleeting sensations. I have a canvas on which the colors are still fresh and I begin to work on it again. The tone will no doubt become duller. I will replace my original tone with one of greater density, an improvement, but less seductive to the eve. The Impressionist painters, especially Monet and Sisley, had delicate sensations, quite close to each other: as a result their canvases all look alike. The word ?impressionism? perfectly characterizes their style, for they register fleeting impressions. It is not an appropriate designation for certain more recent painters who avoid the first impression, and consider it almost dishonest. A rapid rendering of a landscape represents only one moment of its existence. I prefer, by insisting upon its essential character, to risk losing charm in order to obtain greater stability. Underlying this succession of moments which constitutes the superficial existence of beings and things, and which is continually modifying and transforming them, one can search for a truer, more essential character, which the artist will seize so that he may give to reality a more lasting interpretation. When we go into the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sculpture rooms in the Louvre and look, for example, at a Puget, we can see that the expression is forced and exaggerated to the point of being disquieting. It is quite a different matter if we go to the Luxembourg; the attitude in which the sculptors catch their models is always the one in which the development of the members and tensions of the muscles will be shown to greatest advantage. And yet movement thus understood corresponds to nothing in nature: when we capture it by surprise in a snapshot, the resulting image reminds us of nothing that we have seen. Movement seized while it is going on is meaningful to us only if we do not isolate the present sensation either from that which precedes it or that which follows it."