| Painting is something that takes place among
the colors, and . . . one has to leave them alone completely, so that they
can settle the matter among themselves. Their intercourse: this is the
whole of painting. Whoever meddles, arranges, injects his human deliberation,
his wit, his advocacy, his intellectual agility in any way, is already
disturbing and clouding their activity.
Rainer
Maria Rilke (1875-1926), German poet. Letter to his wife, 21 Oct. 1907
(published in Rilke's Letters on Cézanne, 1985; in Germany, 1952). |
An original is a creation
motivated by desire.
Any reproduction of an original
is motivated be necessity . . .
It is marvelous that we are
the only species that creates
gratuitous forms.
To create is divine, to reproduce
is human.
Man
Ray (1890-1976), U.S. photographer. "Originals Graphic Multiples" (published
in Objets de Mon Affection, 1983; repr. in Neil Baldwin, Man Ray, ch. 24,
1988). |
|
|
To me, a painter, if not the most useful, is the
least harmful member of our society.
Man Ray (1890-1976), U.S. photographer.
Self Portrait, ch. 6 (1963). |
|
|
| I am against nature. I don't dig nature at all.
I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are
dreams, which nature can't touch with decay.
Bob
Dylan (b. 1941), U.S. singer, songwriter. Quoted in: Robert Shelton,
No Direction Home, ch. 1, "Kaddish" (1986). |
|
| The tree which moves some to tears of joy is
in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see
nature all ridicule and deformity . . . and some scarce see nature at all.
But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.
William Blake (1757-1827), English
poet, painter, engraver. Letter, 23 Aug. 1799 (published in The Letters
of William Blake, 1956). |
|
|
| It has never been my object to record my dreams,
just the determination to realize them.
Man Ray (1890-1976), U.S. photographer.
Julien Levy exhibition catalogue, April 1945. Quoted in: Neil Baldwin,
Man Ray Introduction (1988). |
|
|
When I am finishing a picture I hold some God-made
object up to it-a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand-as a
kind of final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot
make, the painting is authentic. If there's a clash between the two, it
is bad art.
Marc
Chagall (1889-1985), French artist. Saturday Evening Post (New York,
2 Dec. 1962). |
|
|
| I paint what cannot be photographed, that which
comes from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive.
I photograph the things that I do not wish to paint, the things which already
have an existence.
Man Ray (1890-1976), U.S. photographer.
Interview in Caméra (Paris; repr. in Man Ray: Photographer, ed.
by Philippe Sers, 1981). |
|
|
| We are all hungry and thirsty for concrete images.
Abstract art will have been good for one thing: to restore its exact virginity
to figurative art.
Salvador
Dali (1904-89), Spanish painter. Diary of a Genius (1966), entry for
2 Aug. 1953. |
|
|
Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste
is the enemy of creativeness.
Pablo
Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist. Quote (Anderson, S.C., 24 March
1957). |
|
|
Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed.
William
Blake (1757-1827), English poet, painter, engraver. Notes on The Laocoön
(engraved c. 1820; repr. in Complete Writings, ed. by Geoffrey Keynes,
1957). |
|
|
| Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce
nothing.
Salvador Dali (1904-89), Spanish
painter. Dali by Dali, "The Futuristic Dali" (1970). |
|
|
All quotations are from The Columbia
Dictionary of Quotations is licensed from Columbia University Press. Copyright
© 1993 by Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. |
