Arapoha, Greece - 20071. "Accidents, try to change them - it's impossible. The accidental reveals man."
2. "Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness."
3. “An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought.”
4. “Anything new, anything worth doing, can't be recognized. People just don't have that much vision.”
5. “Are we to paint what's on the face, what's inside the face, or what's behind it?”
6. "Art is a lie that makes us realize truth."
7. "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."
8. “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.”
9. "Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."
10. “Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.”
11. ”Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.”
12. "Enough of Art. It's Art that kills us. People no longer want to do painting: they make art. People want Art. And they are given it. But the less Art there is in painting the more painting there is."
13. "...even if the painting is green, well then! the 'subject' is the green. There is always a subjet; it's a joke to suppress the subject, it's impossible."
14. "Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction."
15. "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist when you grow up."
16. "Everyone wants to understand painting. Why don't they try to understand the song of the birds? Why do they love a night, a flower, everything which surrounds man, without attempting to understand them? Whereas where painting is concerned, they want to understand."
17. "Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one’s bath like a lump of sugar!"
18. "Everything you can imagine is real."
19. “...from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web.. We must pick out what
is good for us where we can find it.”
20. "Give me a museum and I'll fill it."
21. “God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat. He has no real style. He just keeps on trying other things.”
22. "Good taste is the enemy of creativity. "
23. "I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
24. “I don't own any of my own paintings because a Picasso original costs several thousand dollars -- it's a luxury I can't afford.”
25. “I do not seek, I find.”
26. "If everybody is looking for it, then nobody is finding it. If we were cultured, we would not be conscious of lacking culture. We would regard it as something natural and would not make so much fuss about it. And if we knew the real value of this word we would be cultured enough not to give it so much importance."
27. "If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes."
28. "If you take my sayings and explode them in the air, they remain only sayings. But if you fit them together in their correct places, you will have the whole story."
29. "I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful? One must speak of problems in painting!"
30. "I like all painting. I always look at the paintings - good or bad - in barbershops, furniture stores, provincial hotels...I'm like a drinker who needs wine. As long as it is wine, it doesn't matter which wine."
31. “I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.”
32. "I paint the way someone bite his fingernails; for me, painting is a bad habit because I don't know nor can I do anything else."
33. "I see, for others, that is to say, in order to put on canvas the sudden apparitions which come to me. I don't know in advance what I am going to put on canvas any more than I decide beforehand what colors I am going to use. While I am working I am not conscious of what I am putting on the canvas. Each time I undertake to paint a picture I have a sensation of leaping into space. I never know whether I shall fall on my feet. It is only later that I begin to estimate more exactly the effect of my work."
34. “Is there anything more dangerous than sympathetic understanding?”
35. "It is your work in life that is your ultimate seduction."
36. “It takes a long time to become young.”
37. "I who have been involved with all styles of painting can assure you that the only things that fluctuate are the waves of fashion which carry the snobs and speculators; the number of true connoisseurs remains more or less the same."
38. “Love is the greatest refreshment in life.”
39. ”My mother said to me, "If you become a soldier, you'll be a general; if you become a monk, you'll end up as the pope." Instead, I became a painter, and wound up Picasso.”
40. " Often while reading a book one feels that the author would have preferred to paint rather than to write; one can sense the pleasure he derives from describing a landscape of a person, as if he were painting what he is saying, because from deep in his heart he would have preferred to use brushes and colors. "
41. “Once I drew like Raphael but it has taken me a lifetime to draw like a child.”
42. "One does a whole painting for one peach and people think just the opposite -- that particular peach is but a detail."
43. “One must act in painting as in life, directly.”
44. “Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.”
45. “Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.”
46. "Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot; others transform a yellow spot into the sun."
47. "Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility."
48. "Talent without application is just a bad habit."
49. "Taste is the enemy of creativeness."
50. ”The artist is a receptacle for the emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web.”
51. “The chief enemy of creativity is "good" sense.”
52. “The first thing to do in life is to do with purpose what one purposes to do.”
53. "The goal I proposed myself in making cubism? To paint and nothing more. And to paint seeking a new expression, divested of useless realism, with a method linked only to my thought - without enslaving myself with objective reality. Neither the good nor the true; neither the useful or the useless."
54. "The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about it. The more technique there is, the less there is."
55. "There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality."
56. "Through art we express our conception of what nature is not."
57. “The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?”
58. "To copy others is necessary, but to copy oneself is pathetic."
59. “To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final blow, the coup de Grace for the painter as well as for the picture.”
60. “To me there is no past or future in art. If a work of art cannot live always in the present it must not be considered at all. The art of Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other times, is not an art of the past, perhaps it is more alive today than it ever was.”
61. “We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convice others of the thruthfulness of his lies. If he only shows in his work that he has searched, and re-searched, for the way to put over lies, he would never accomplish anything.”
62. "We must not discriminate between things. Where things are concerned there are no class distinctions. We must pick out what is good for us where we can find it."
63. "What does it mean for a painter to paint in the manner of So-and-So or to actually imitate someone else? What's wrong with that? On the contrary, it's a good idea. You should constantly try to paint like someone else. But the thing is, you can't! You would like to. You try. But it turns out to be a botch...And at the very moment you make a botch of it that you're yourself."
64. "What is a face, really? Its own photo? Its make-up? Or is it a face as painted by such or such painter? That which is in front? Inside? Behind? And the rest? Doesn't everyone look at himself in his own particular way? Deformations simply do not exist."
65. "What is truth? Truth cannot exist. ... Truth does not exist. ... Truth is a lie."
66. "What might be taken for a precocious genius is the genius of childhood. When the child grows up, it disappears without a trace. It may happen that this boy will become a real painter some day, or even a great painter. But then he will have to begin everything again, from zero."
67. "When you come right down to it all you have is yourself. The sun is a thousand rays in your belly. All the rest is nothing."
68. "When you start with a portrait and search for a pure form, a clear volume, through successive eliminations, you arrive inevitably at the egg. Likewise, starting with the egg and following the same process in reverse, one finishes with the portrait."
69. “Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter?”
70. “Work is a necessity for man. Man invented the alarm clock.”
71. “You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea.”
72. “You mustn't always believe what I say. Questions tempt you to tell lies, particularly when there is no answer.”
