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Karel Appel

58 quotes

“I don't paint, I hit.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quote circa 1958; from the movie 'De werkelijkheid van Karel Appel', Jan Vrijman; as quoted in De Tweede Helft, Ad de Visser, SUN Nijmegen, 1998
“I paint like a barbarian in this barbarous time.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“in Dutch: Ik schilder als een barbaar in deze barbaarse tijd.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quote, c. 1960; from the documentary De werkelijkheid van Karel Appel, by Dutch filmer , 1962
“Of course, I painted before Cobra, as afterwards. Each one of us [CoBrA-artists] had his own personality. Cobra is only a very short period of my life. It was like a crossroads. We crossed paths and each continued on his way.. ..We [artists] are not born to form groups. A group that lasted for too long would destroy the creative activity of its members.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote of Appel in an interview with , 1963; as quoted in; Karel Appel, a gesture of colour, Jean-François Lyotard, (original French text of 1992 based upon intensive correspondence with Karel Appel), Christine Buci-Gluc…
“Now we'll start the song of the wild man who lives on the mountain top, who does not want to be seen let us now start that song without words, without music, come on.. (let's not do anything for at least ten minutes) That's the spirit, there he comes, the song of the inner voice, the song of the primitive man”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: a poem of Karel Appel, 1981; from Karel Appel. The Colourful Stranger. Poems and Drawings (Karel Appel. De kleurige onbekende. Gedichten en tekeningen), Amsterdam, 1986
“I have painted like an ape. The ape phase is in all my work. My first lick of paint is the ape phase, from that I grow towards a more intellectual phase, involving the lines, the rhythm. From that phase I grow towards mankind, for that is where the power of my imagination lies. It no longer has anything to do with reality, even though the world is present in it - for we recognize people, animals, plants, you name it.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quote of Karel Appel: from the conversation with Rudy Fuchs in 1990; as quoted in 'The Low Countries', Jaargang 12(2004) on DBNL (Dutch Librairy online)
“..at least fifty [gouaches painted in complete dark], one after another. Then I made a light, a candle, and I picked them up and turned them around, as I couldn't see a top or a bottom. I finished them off as I felt fit, a bit more white or a red spot [in his studio in Amsterdam, in 1947”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from a talk in 1990 with Rudi Fuchs; in 'Appel, about growing older'; as quoted by Frank van der Ploeg, in 'The Low Countries'. Jaargang 12(2004)
“When you get older as a painter and you've got the opportunities, the talent and the good fortune and have been provided with everything for getting old, then it's fantastic, because the same brushstroke that you put down is more mature and more poignant than it was when you were young.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from a 1995 interview with Rudi Fuchs; in 'Appel, about growing older'; as quoted by Frank van der Ploeg, in 'The Low Countries'. Jaargang 12(2004)
“Willem de Kooning, they say, lost his memory. He lost his worldly memory. He lost the names of the people, he lost their faces.. .This is one of the reasons he paints as a real painter.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“..And his painting is like the wind, like a breeze blowing the paint across the canvas, so unreal, so loose and far away from the worldly life.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He is like an angel who floats for a little while on this planet and touches with his wings the canvas.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That is what he used to do, what he is doing now for the last hears. He is the only painter who paints like that.. ..like the wind, like the ocean, like the light, like the sunlight, like the moonlight, far away from everything, without any image..”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quotes from Appel's poem '..and now I want to talk about Willem de Kooning, February 1990
“The Cobra group started new, and first of all we threw away all these things we had known and started afresh, like a child — fresh and new. Sometimes my works look very childish, or childlike, schizophrenic or stupid, you know. But that was the good thing for me. Because, for me, the material is the paint itself. The paint expresses itself. In the mass of paint, I find my imagination and go on to paint it.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in: 'Karel Appel, Dutch Expressionist Painter, Dies at 85', by Margalit Fox, in 'Art & Design', New York Times May 9, 2006
“My paint is like a rocket, which describes its own space. I try to make the impossible possible. What is happening I cannot foresee, it is a surprise. Painting, like passion, is an emotion full of truth and rings a living sound, like the roar coming from the lion's breast.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To paint is to destroy what preceded. I never try to make a painting, but a chunk of life. It is a scream; it is a night; it is like a child; it is a tiger behind bars.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's like this - you are in front of your canvas, you hand holds the paint, ready, raised. The canvas waits, waits, empty and white - but all the time it knows what it wants. So - what does it want, anyway? My hand comes near, my eyes begin to transform the waiting canvas; and when - with my hands holding the paint and my eyes seeing the forms - I touch the canvas, it trembles, it comes to life.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The struggle begins, to harmonize canvas, eye, hand, forms. New apparitions stalk the earth.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“..people always talk about painting, because basically painting does not talk.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To keep it short and simple.. ..you take the subject, that is for example the wood, and the colour, the paint. You compose the subject, the realistic subject, you make a fantastic shape. For example, here, this is some wood, this is a table with a top and wooden flowers, you know, therefore I paint a [flowery] table, for example..”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“..because I live in Paris, but just outside Paris at the start of Yonne, I have a barn, a very, very big barn.. ..right near Auxerre, a barn forty meters long, six meters wide and fifteen meters high, and I do all my work there.. it's like a large street, you know.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“..I believe, they always say to me that I'm an expressionist, I don't know why, because perhaps the technique is [not understood] and the colour is strong.. .But for some years, I work, I feel much more of, of the space, that is: magic is spacious if you like. Because for me man is an infinitely creative space. And because of that I am always looking to expand my work, you know, to find space.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The wastelands belong to my youth [c. 1930's]. When I was young I played in the outskirts of the city - watching the cranes at the harbour. There was no law but garbage, grass and wildflowers like boys and girls, rough, hot and sexual and full of hidden pleasures. Life and death are overlapping in the wastelands like in my paintings.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: pp. 75-77 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)
“One of my first sculptures was made of bicycle parts. I was living at that time in a attic in the red light section of Amsterdam. I started to work without any specific materials. I was looking in the street like when I was a young boy, in the garbage cans, for ropes, wires, and paint. I left my parents in 1940. Years later I saw an exhibition of Kurt Schwitters at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam curated by Willem Sandberg and there I saw the real 'objet trouvé'; until then I had never heard about it. Schwitters was a shattering experience.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 79 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)
“I'm not a pessimist. Maybe I don't have a primitive feeling of happiness, that is true. Sometimes my color is happy but not the expression.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 85 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)
“Our civilization is in a continuous state of self-repair. Maybe you have undergone surgery once. In former times you might have died. Today everybody can live on and on; everything around us is repaired, even the spirit. Look at the young artists. They only paint the facade and not the things hidden behind it. I don't say that life is lost its originality. I show straightforwardly the state of repair of civilization.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 85 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)
“As an artist you have to fight and survive the wilderness to keep your creative freedom. Creativity is very fragile. It's like a leaf in the fall; it hangs and when it drops you don't know where it's drifting.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 91 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)
“When I was young I once found a book in a Dutch translation, The 'Leaves of Grass'. It was the first time a book touched me by its feeling of freedom and open spaces, the way the poet spoke of the ocean by describing a drop of water in his hand. Walt Whitman was offering the world an open hand (now we call it democracy) and my 'Monument for Walt Whitman' became this open hand with mirrors, so you can see inside yourself.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 93 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)
“The duty of the artist is not to be calculating in any sense, so that he may be free himself of human emotions while carried by the universal forces of life. Only then does one not think about making art, or about styles, or directions. Something comes about, something happens.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Through play, we renew contact with childhood - My art is childlike.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[artists are people] who employ matter between birth and death. Matter is something to use, not possess.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Knowledge isolates phenomena and things to observe with.. ..nothing is isolatable or can be removed from its environment. Anything which becomes isolated ceases to exist. It is like the violent refusal of someone to play a game in which everyone cheats.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The experience of the moment is what's important, and somehow the image, the 'thing' is left over.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My brush-strokes start in nothing and they end in nothing, and in-between you find the image.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every day I have to be awake to escape.. .The whole world is sleepy. It is a real fight to be awake, to see everything new, for the first time in your life.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There exists an insanity that touches on a higher level, by knowledge or instinct. That insanity of life I try to put in my painting. It has nothing to do with any morals or laws. It is there and it is insane.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All the absurdity and hope are the stimulants to create. You make art to find a little hole to go on. You go through the whole to find the world again, and the absurdity is that still, somehow it is the same.. .Hopelessness and hope are the same. It's a very thin line you don't see any more. I don't believe in that line between hopelessness and hope today.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At the very moment when my ego is unprooted [uprooted?] and freed of intellectual activities and values, the realization of what is still unknown and uncreated, the silent 'non-form' unity emerges, appearing as childish schizophrenia. The indefinable beginning takes form”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 1969 - from CF,32; p. 45
“Something appears midway between order and chaos, these forms, these expressions occupy a middle position.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 1973 - from CF,35; p. 67
“A war is raging within me that burns everything. So I can begin again.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quote 1982 - from CF, 48; p. 83
“Theories / are things.. .Absence and nonexistence / of theories are things.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quote 1983 - from CF, 63; p. 55
“The true artist has no style. Style is an exterior decorative element. The true artist as servant of his matter, transcends it with an absolute freedom.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) first seen 1984 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quote, 1984 - from ATV', 188; p. 49
“If the stroke of the brush is so important, it is because it expresses precisely what is not there.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) first seen 1985 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quote 1985 - from CF, 44; p. 69
“a sky of clouds completely 'out of the blue'.. .I'm looking, reflecting, and when it suddenly happens: hey, the clouds, and what clouds! [in interview with , c. 1988]”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quote c. 1988 - from ('RM'), 157; p. 41
“Theories Are the things and neither idealism nor religions, nor histories nor slogans. The complexity of things themselves, that's what theories are.. .The thing exists without showing itself, entirely, it does nor appear, theory is the thing.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a question of expressing, at base, the essence of the tree.. .What does not appear in what does appear, in short. What remains hidden, concealed, withdraws into what appears.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am afraid of a new barbarism which is killing man's freedom.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In poetic creation there is no question of overcoming matter, as the idle aesthetic proclaimed by so many people would have it – but to free matter.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If I had not become a painter, I would surely have become a clown.. .. because I make people laugh.. ..Faces deformed by suffering, humour or work. Often crazy. They then became imaginary, when I adorned them with movements free colours depending on the head. The colour too become clown-like”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Pollock.. .I also feel like an erupting volcano.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The brushstroke, in painting, is purely and simply what it is – rhythm, color, matter.”
Karel Appel (1921–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source