Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,808 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
Art
LoveFriendshipHappinessHopeFearCourageDeathLifeTimeWarPeaceFreedomTruthWisdomKnowledgeScienceArtMusicNatureMoneyWorkPowerGodBeautyLaughterFamilySuccess and failureChangeDreamsBooks and reading
“To give without sympathy is to build a temple without the idol and is as futile as painting a picture with black ink on a black-board.”
Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It struck me as I waited that all great enterprises are about logistics. Not genius or inspiration or flights of imagination, skill or cunning, but logistics. Building pyramids or landing spacecraft on Jupiter or invading whole continents or painting divine scenes over the roofs of chapels: logistics.”
Tom McCarthy (writer) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yesterday Sisley was looking for me everywhere. Madame Latouche told me that he wanted some information about the technique of painting fans. Well, this means my fans are spoken of.. .I only fear one thing: that they will finally say that's all I am good for! [fans!]”
Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) first seen 1886 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: letter, Paris, 5 February 1886, to his son Lucien; in Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; transl. Lionel Abel; Pantheon …
“I am never in a hurry to reach details. First and above all I am interested in the large masses and the general character of a picture; when these are well established, then I try for subtleties of form and color. I rework the painting constantly and freely, and without any systematic method.”
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875) first seen 1850 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from Corot's 'Notebooks', ca. 1850, as quoted in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, pp. 240-241
“If my time has come I shall have nothing to complain of. For fifty-tree years I have been painting; so I have been able to devote myself entirely to what I loved best in the world. I had never suffered poverty; I had good parents and excellent friends; I can only thank God.”
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875) first seen 1875 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from Corot's letter to his friend M. Francais in 1875, the year of his death
“Rather than just a depiction of nature, I searched for something like soul. I was occupied with painting children, studying them was more rewarding to me than studying adults at that time. I also wanted to give more to the children.”
Fritz von Uhde (1848–1911) said by 1911 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Bowron, Aurisch, Supan, Künste (2000). Romantics, realists, revolutionaries: masterpieces of 19th-century German painting from the Museum of Fine Arts, Leipzig. Prestel. p. 158
“Only what can be seen there [in the painting] is there.. .What you see is what you see.”
Frank Stella (1936–2024) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From an interview (1964), as cited in Harold Rosenberg The Re-Definition of Art (1972), p. 125
“If you don't know what Ad Reinhardt's) paintings are about, you don't know what painting is about.”
Frank Stella (1936–2024) first seen 1967 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Comment after Reinhardt's death (1967), as cited in David Anfam Abstract Expressionism, London: Thames and Hudson (1990)
“Ken Noland would use concentric circles; he'd want to get them in the middle [of the painting] because it's the easiest way to get them there, and he want them there in the front, on the surface of the canvas. If you're that much involved with the surface of anything, you're bound to find symmetry the most natural means.”
Frank Stella (1936–2024) said by 2024 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The painting never changes once I've started to paint it. I work things out before-hand in the sketches.”
Frank Stella (1936–2024) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cited in Caroline. A. Jones Machine in the Studio, University of Chicago Press (1996), pp. 197-198
“The next picture is a Goliath with four arms, reading a book, lofting a 1000-pound dumbbell, aiming a pistol at a target, painting a picture. The enemy can do everything. "He's a giant, seven feet tall with four arms, each with two biceps. Each arm can, of course, be used simultaneously.”
Herman Kahn (1922–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Painting the sensual with thy hues divine,— Thou turn'st away thy face, while scattering Perchance upon his brow some fading flowers, Of which he strives to twine a funeral crown, Spending his life to weave a wreath of death!”
Zygmunt Krasiński (1812–1859) said by 1859 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he Method which ought to be follow'd in instructing a Scholar in the Executive Part of Painting; ...first have him learn the most common Effections of Practical Geometry, and the first Elements of Plain Geometry, and common Arithmetic.”
Brook Taylor (1685–1732) said by 1732 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[H]e should be instructed in the Theory of the Colours; that he should learn... their particular Properties... Relations, and... Effects that are produced by their Mixture; and that he should be made well acquainted with the Nature of the several material Colours... used in Painting.”
Brook Taylor (1685–1732) said by 1732 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Music combines the temporal aspects of film and dance with the spatial aspects of painting and sculpture, where pitch space (or frequency space) takes the place of three-dimensional physical space... frequency maps in the auditory cortex... function much the way that spatial maps do in the visual cortex.”
Daniel Levitin (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My painting, at the limit, can only signify itself... It is. So much so, and so well, that anyone can make it and claim it... Perhaps the only thing that one can do after having seen a canvas like ours is total revolution.”
Daniel Buren (born 1938) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Daniel Buren in an 1968 interviewer, cited in: Andrew Russeth, "Daniel Buren Shows His Stripes: The Celebrated Artist’s Two-Gallery Show Is On, After a Sandy Delay." at observer.com, 01/08/13
“The sense of motion in painting and sculpture has long been considered as one of the primary elements of the composition.”
Alexander Calder (1898–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This hall was, by order of the Emperor Jehanguire, the son of Acbar, highly decorated with painting and gilding; but in the lapse of time it was found to be gone greatly to decay; and the Emperor Aurungzebe, either from superstition or avarice, ordered it to be entirely defaced, and the walls whitened.”
Akbar (1542–1605) said by 1605 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: About the defaced tomb of Akbar. William Hodges, Travels in India during the Years 1780, 1781, 1782 and 1783.
Also quoted by: William Hodges
“There are so many lines of that song ( Blood on the Tracks , Bob Dylan ) where you think. That is a painting.”
Jack Vettriano (1951–2025) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interviewed by Sue Lawley on Desert Island Discs BBC Radio 4 (2 April 2004).
“Hence SELECTION in photography, or at least in landscape and some other branches of work, often takes the place of what in painting becomes voluntary COMPOSITION.”
Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) said by 1908 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have to work things out by painting them. I can't just imagine what will happen. I have to do it and see it. That's the only way I find out if it will go anywhere.”
Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Picasso loved depicting. He didn't love painting. It's always more like filling in for Picasso. But you can see that Matisse loved the stuff. He loved making it thin, loved moving it around.”
Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This country [landscape around Honfleur, where Bazille was painting with Monet, circa 1864] is paradise. Nowhere could you find more lush fields with more beautiful trees. Cows and horses roam freely everywhere.”
Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to his mother, c. 1864; as quoted in Frédéric Bazille and early Impressionism, Marandel, Daulte et al. p. 166
“I have almost finished a large landscape [painting 'Landscape by the Lez River' - [around Montpellier].. ..I am completely alone on the country; my cousins and my brother are at the resort. My father and mother are living in town; this solitude pleases me enormously; it makes me work a lot and read a lot.”
Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870) first seen 1870 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to , 2 August 1870; as quoted in Impressionnism, Gary Tinterow, Henri Loyrette; Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994, p. 338
“The subject matter is unimportant, provided what I have done is interesting as a painting. I chose the modern era because it is the one I understand best; I find it more alive for people who are alive.”
Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870) said by 1870 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no difference between landscapes and other subjects: in general in painting I try to express the emotions that the contemplation of the form produces in me.”
Roger Fry (1866–1934) said by 1934 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A painting to me is primarily a verb, not a noun, an event first and only secondarily an image.”
Elaine de Kooning (1918–1989) first seen 1959 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: as quoted in "It is", No.4, Autumn, 1959 Magazine for Abstract Art, Second Half Publishing Co., New York pp. 29,30
“In painting it is the forming of the image.”
Cy Twombly (1928–2011) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In: 'In painting it is the forming of the image', Cy Twombly, 'L'Esperienza moderna', 1957; as quoted in Cy Twombly, a monograph, Richard Leeman / picture research Isabelle d’Hauteville. London, 2005 p. 239
“If you could see what these flowers are. [Morandi's remark, circa 1917 - to the writer Raimondi from Bologna, indicating flowers in the corner of a reproduction of a painting by w:El Greco – beneath the feet of angels and saints]). No modern painter has painted flowers like these. Perhaps only Renoir”
Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) first seen 1894 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote of Morandi; as cited in Morandi 1894 – 1964, ed: M. C. Bandera & R. Miracco, Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna, 2008; p. 48
“Landscapes are about beauty and death. The only way you can define beauty.. ..is to know that death is hiding behind it. This is what haunts you when you’re doing a so-called landscape painting. -”
Per Kirkeby (1938–2018) first seen 1992 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: as quoted in Per Kirkeby: Paintings and Drawings, Helaine Posner, exhibition catalogue (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT List Visual Arts Center, 1992
“it doesn't care too much if it's from the 60's or from last year - it's kind of the same thing [in his paintings].. ..apparently there are certain structures, certain ways of organizing a painting that's there, that I'm born with as a painter.”
Per Kirkeby (1938–2018) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: in the film: 'Per Kirkeby, on his work', 2012
“[Mitchell wanted in her painting].. the feeling in a line of poetry which makes it different from, a line of prose.. .Sentimentality is self-pity, your own swamp. Weeping in your own beer is not a feeling. It lacks dignity and hasn't an outside reference.”
Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from an interview with Irving Sandler (c. 1956); as cited in Joan Mitchell, Lady Painter, by Patricia Albers, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 3 may 2011, p. 244
“I dare not think of the sun-drenched beaches and the stormy skies, and of the joy of painting them in the sea breezes.”
Eugène Boudin (1824–1898) first seen 1869 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote in a letter, from Paris 14 June 1869, to family-friend Ferdinand Martin; as cited by Colin B. Bailey in The Annenberg Collection: Masterpieces of Impressionism and Post-impressionism, publisher, Metropolitan Museu…
“Gradually it dawned on me that I was painting my own inner emotions. Those children were asking: "Why are we here? What is life all about? Why is there sadness and injustice?" All those deep questions. Those children were sad because they didn't have the answers. They were searching.”
Margaret Keane (1927–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Naturally, form has come to take precedence over color with me, though when I began painting color predominated. Slowly artistic evolution carried from color to form and while I still employ color, of course, it is the drawing which assumes the place of first importance in my pictures.”
Francis Picabia (1879–1953) first seen 1915 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote of Picabia, in an interview in an American newspaper, 1915; as quoted by William A. Camfield, in Francis Picabia: His Art, Life and Times, Princeton, 1979, p.77
“You who are sitting before me have the power to change my consciousness into painting, poem, melody or anything else!”
Suman Pokhrel (born 1967) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Writing is fifty years behind painting.”
Brion Gysin (1916–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Brion Gysin: Tuning in to the Multimedia Age, ed. José Férez Kuri (Thames & Hudson, London, 2003), p. 153.
“The ability and the desire to transmit knowhow, intention, and insight to others around us have co-evolved with humanity itself. Mixed reality is a huge milestone in that human project of record keeping, perspective sharing, empathising, and merging with the ‘other’, a project that began with the first cave painting, or even earlier.”
Anand Gandhi (born 1980) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: ‘Cost of Coal’, India’s first documentary in VR" in The Hindu (16 July 2016)
“Painting is the most beautiful lie.”
Kees van Dongen (1877–1968) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: in: Modern Dutch painting: an introduction, Netherlands Information Service, (1960), p. 26
“Needless to say, adventure characters should be just one facet of videogaming. In the same way a painting allows us to gaze upon the faces and souls of people from another age, or a book permits us to linger on the thoughts of great figures from history and fiction, videogames can expand our awareness of the world as it is, was, or might be.”
Adam West (1928–2017) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Keyboard: Guest Editorials", Videogaming Illustrated, (July 1983), p. 6
“Painting, even if we call it bad, if it is what helps to keep someone alive, how can we condemn it?”
Albert Marquet (1875–1947) first seen 1898 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Marcelle Marquet, Marquet, Fernand Hazan Editions, Paris 1955, p. 3; as quoted in 'Appendix – Marquet Speaks on his Art' in "Albert Marquet and the Fauve movement, 1898-1908", Norris Judd, published 1976, - translation …
“It is in working [= painting] that you will find yourself..”
Albert Marquet (1875–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quotes by Marcelle Marquet; as cited in Exposition Marquet, Musee des Beaux Arts Nancy, Juin - July, 1959, p. 18 (transl. Norris Judd)
“I never did a western while at Universal. I did a variety of roles, including ‘The Climax’ with Boris Karloff. There is a huge painting of me in the film. When it was over, Ernest Pagano, one of the producers, put it up in his office. It took up most of the wall! I wasn’t happy because people thought we were having an affair—which I never have and never would do.”
June Vincent (1920–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I should not base it [ the mural-painting 'Madonna della Vallicella' Rubens painted c. 1607] on the estimate of Rome but leave it to the discretion of His Highness [the Duke of Mantua].. ..though the figures [but withdraw it for the light in the church was to strong there] are saints, they have no special attributes or insignia that could not be applied to any other saints of similar rank.”
Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) first seen 1608 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In his letter to Count Annibale Chieppio (minister of the Duke of Mantua), February 2, 1608; as quoted in Rembrandts Eyes', by w:Simon Schrama, Alfred A. Knopf, Borzoi Books, New York 1999, p. 131 (LPPR, 42)
“Why do I paint? In my work as a mathematician, form, structure, and economy of expression are important. In music, add tone quality, balance and harmony. And now in painting, these aesthetic values are enhanced by color, contrast, and composition.”
Robin Hartshorne (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Adieu, adieu, I am going to see up there [after death] whether friend Corot has found me any new subjects for landscape painting.”
Charles-François Daubigny (1817–1878) said by 1878 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote, as recorded by Albert Wolff, 1880's, in Notes upon certain masters of the XIX century, - printed not published MDCCCLXXXVI (1886), The Art Age Press, 400 N.Y. (written after the exhibition 'Cent Chefs-d'Oeuvres: …
“People think that painting is about color It's mostly composition It's composition that's the whole thing The classic image- Two late Tang dishes, one with a flower image, one empty – the empty form goes all the way to heaven It is the classic form – lighter weight.”
Agnes Martin (1912–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I painted for 20 years without liking them very much, you know. I burnt them at the end of every year. For 20 years I burnt the whole bunch because I didn't want them to get in the market. And well, sometimes when I was starving, I used to sell one cheap, you know. But I always regretted it because you hate to think of a painting in somebody's house that you don't like well enough, you know.”
Agnes Martin (1912–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“..learn to draw: that's where most of you [Troyon's pupils] are falling down today.. ..draw with all your might; you can never learn to much. However, don't neglect painting, go to the country from time to time and make studies and above all develop them.”
Constant Troyon (1810–1865) first seen 1859 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted by Monet, in his letter to Boudin, 1859; as quoted in Discovering Art, – The life time and work of the World's greatest Artists, MONET; K.E. Sullivan, Brockhamptonpress, London 2004, p. 11
“..the great Dutch school seemed to think of nothing but painting well [characterised by] the total absence of what today we call 'a subject'.”
Eugène Fromentin (1820–1876) said by 1876 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from Les Maitres d'Autrefois / The Old Masters, Eugène Fromentin; 1948, p. 108; as cited in 'Dutch Painting of the Golden Age', http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/dutch-painting-the-golden-age/content-…