Great Throughts Treasury

"Every positive value has its price in negative terms, and you never see anything very great which is not, at the same time, horrible in some respect... the genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima. "

"The essential in this time of moral poverty is to create enthusiasm."

"To copy others is necessary, but to copy oneself is pathetic."

"Academic training in beauty is a sham."

"Age only matters when one is aging. Now that I have arrived at a great age, I might just as well be twenty."

"Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth."

"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."

"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."

"I do not evolve, I am. In art there is neither past nor future. Art that is not in the present will never be."

"I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them."

"It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction."

"It takes a very long time to become young."

"Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He copies it five times, ten times, always clarifying the line. He’s convinced that the last, the most stripped down, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and in fact, most of the time, it was the first. In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt. "

"Taste is the enemy of creativeness."

"We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize-at least, the truth that is given us to understand...Nature and art, being two different things, cannot be the same thing. Through art we express our conception of what nature is not."

"All art is subversive."

"Anything new, anything worth doing, can't be recognized. People just don't have that much vision."

"An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought."

"Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs. "

"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."

"All art is erotic. "

"Everything you can imagine is real."

"Action is the foundational key to all success. "

"Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art. "

"Everybody has the same energy potential. The average person wastes his in a dozen little ways. I bring mine to bear on one thing only: my paintings and everything else is sacrificed to it...myself included. "

"Everything is a miracle. "

"Give me a museum and I'll fill it. "

"Go and do the things you can't. That is how you get to do them. "

"God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things. "

"He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. This is an inexorable, indisputable law. "

"Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions. "

"Every act of creation is first an act of destruction. "

"Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things. "

"Art is the elimination of the unnecessary. "

"I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else. "

"I do not seek. I find. "

"I don't believe in accidents. There are only encounters in history. There are no accidents. "

"I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money. "

"If I don't have red, I use blue. "

"If I paint a wild horse, you might not see the horse... but surely you will see the wildness! "

"If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes. "

"I'm always doing things I cannot do, that's how achieving them. "

"I'm not a developer, I am. "

"Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working. "

"Love is the greatest refreshment in life "

"Of being modern… I want to be eternal. "

"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone "

"Painting is just another way of keeping a diary. "

"Painting is not made to decorate apartments. It's an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy. "