Subject of a Painting: "Every intelligent painter carries the whole culture of modern painting in his head. It is his real subject, of which everything he paints is both an homage and a critique."
— Abstract Expressionist Robert Motherwell, New York Times, 19 June 1977. (Quoted in Teaching Art by Carl Goldstein, page 117)
Masterpieces: "A masterpiece withstands time. Its importance grows on those who feel attracted by its unending life. It creates enthusiasm which spreads from soul to soul..."
— Hilla Rebay, The Beauty of Non-Objectivity (quoted in Modern Art and Modernism: A Critical Anthology, edited by Francis Frascina and Charles Harrison, p146).
History Painting: "If you want to be a historical painter, let your history be of your own time, of what you can get to know personally — of manners and customs within your own experience." — Robert Henri, The Art Spirit, p218.
Developing as an Artist: "Take solace in the example of Vincent van Gogh. Look at some of his early drawings -- they are dreadful, as if he were sketching with a potato. But how far he came, quite quickly, and what enormous heights he reaches."
— Danny Gregory, The Creative License, p61.
Monet and Tone: "The decorative qualities of Monet's later works, and the ease with which they lent themselves to actual decorations, are the result in part of his interest in 'pattern', but to a great extent also of his subordination of tonal contrast to colour relationships."
— John House in "Monet: Nature Into Art" p133.
Watercolor: "Watercolor is tricky stuff, an amateur's but really a virtuoso's medium. It is the most light-filled of all ways of painting... It is hospitable to accident... but disaster-prone as well. One slip, and the veil of atmosphere turns into a muddy puddle, a garish swamp."
— Art critic Robert Hughes in "Winslow Homer" in Time magazine, 1986, quoted in Nothing if Not Critical p109
The Secret of Constable's Green: "... lies in the fact that it is composed of a multitude of different greens. The lack of life and intensity in the greenery of the common landscape painters is caused by the fact they usually paint it in a uniform green."
-- Delacroix's Journal I, 5 March 1847, p281 (quoted in Art in Theory 1815-1900, edited by Harrison, Wood, and Gaiger, p980).
Painting Frames: "The Neo-Impressionists relinquished the golden frame. Its gaudy glitter modifies or destroys the harmony of a painting. They generally use white frames which ... intensify the saturation of colours without disrupting their balance." -- Neo-Impressionist painter Paul Signac in his book From Eugene Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism (1899)
Gauguin: "For the mystical Gauguin, art's mission was to detach itself from earthly reality and, through arrangements of pure colour, float free, taking the beholder into a blissed-out state of alternative consciousness. Use your imagination, he would tell Vincent [van Gogh]; paint from memory, not from what's in front of you."
-- Arts critic Simon Schama, Power of Art, p321.
"Painting is the most beautiful of all arts. In it, all sensations are condensed, at its aspect everyone may create romance at the will of his imagination, and at a glance have his soul invaded by the most profound memories... Like music, it acts on the soul through the intermediary of the senses... hearing can only grasp a single sound at one time, whereas the sight takes in everything and at the same time simplifies at its will."
-- Paul Gauguin, notes on painting made in a sketchbook c.1889-90
(Quoted in John Rewald, Gauguin, 1938, pp161.)
Success as an Artist: "[In] the field of painting, we have a sort of inverse snobbery. This or that painting does not address itself to enough people hence it cannot be great art, at which point one must ask when the number of people who respond to it is great enough ... the box office would become the measure of our culture."
-- Mark Rothko, "Indigenous Art" in his book The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art, p126.
"This word art is entirely modern; the ancients thought of themselves only as workers, and they were certainly right." -- Renoir
-- Renoir's "Statement of 1904" in Nature's Workshop: Renoir's Writings on the Decorative Arts by Robert L. Herbert, Yale University Press, 2000, p154.
Painting Portraits: "To paint a full-length portrait [Whistler] would place a large canvas near his table palette, and his sitter about four feet [1.2m] to the other side of the easel. He would then stand back about twelve feet [3.6m] to observe the scene, taking a good look at both the sitter and canvas, then step forward quickly... His need to maintain the whole visual picture was achieved by his stepping back to assess and memorize, then returning to the easel, often with a run and a slide, to fix the image on the canvas. Such an athletic approach to portraiture would have tired both the painter and the sitter."
-- Ronald Anderson & Anne Koval, Whistler: Beyond the Myth, p201.
Painting Edges: In Cezanne's paintings, "edges aren't boundaries but places where paint, surging across the surface, changes color."
-- Art critic Peter Schjeldahl, "Cezanne versus Pissarro", New Yorker magazine, 11 July 2005
Expression: "Between beauty of expression and power of expression there is a difference of function. The first aims at pleasing the sense, the second has a spiritual vitality which for me is more moving and goes deeper than the senses."
-- Henry Moore, "On Being a Sculptor", p40.
Size and Scale: "A painting is isolated by a frame from its surroundings (unless it serves just a decorative purpose) and so retains more easily its own imaginary scale." -- Henry Moore, "On Being a Sculptor", p27.
