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The Artist Must Scorn All Judgment That Is Not Based On An Intelligent Observation Of Character. He Must Beware Of The Literary Spirit Which So Often Causes A Painting To Deviate From Its True Path - The Concrete Study Of Nature - To Lose Itself All Too Long In Intangible Speculations.

-Paul Cezanne

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The Artist Must Scorn

Paul Cezanne

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The Artist Must Scorn All Judgment That Is Not Based On An Intelligent Observation Of Character. He Must Beware Of The Literary Spirit Which So Often Causes A Painting To Deviate From Its True Path - The Concrete Study Of Nature - To Lose Itself All Too Long In Intangible Speculations.

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Everything Vanishes, Falls Apart, Doesn't It? Nature Is Always The Same But Nothing In Her That Appears To Us Lasts. Our Art Must Render The Thrill Of Her Permanence, Along With Her Elements, The Appearance Of All Her Changes. It Must Give Us A Taste Of Her Eternity.

A Puny Body Weakens The Soul.

Personally I Would Like To Have Pupils, A Studio, Pass On My Love To Them, Work With Them, Without Teaching Them Anything.. ..a Convent, A Monastery, A Phalanstery Of Painting Where One Could Train Together.. ..but No Programme, No Instruction In Painting.. ..drawing Is Still Alright, It Doesn't Count, But Painting - The Way To Learn Is To Look At The Masters, Above All At Nature, And To Watch Other People Painting.

An Art Which Isn't Based On Feeling Isn't An Art At All... Feeling Is The Principle, The Beginning And The End; Craft, Objective, Technique - All These Are In The Middle.

Talks On Art Are Almost Useless. The Work Which Goes To Bring Progress In One's Own Subject Is Sufficient Compensation For The Incomprehension Of Imbeciles.

Tell Me, Do You Think I'm Going Mad? I Sometimes Wonder, You Know.

The Contour Eludes Me.

My Nervous System Is Very Much Weakened - Nothing But Painting In Oil Can Keep Me Going.

The Strong Experience Of Nature... Is The Necessary Basis For All Conception Of Art On Which Rests The Grandeur And Beauty Of All Future Work.

All My Life I Have Worked To Be Able To Earn My Living, But I Thought That One Could Do Good Painting Without Attracting Attention To One's Private Life. Certainly, An Artist Wishes To Raise Himself Intellectually As Much As Possible, But The Man Must Remain Obscure. The Pleasure Must Be Found In The Work.

A Work Of Art Which Did Not Begin In Emotion Is Not Art.

All My Compatriots Are Asses Compared To Me.

I Am Beginning To Consider Myself Stronger Than All Those Around Me, And You Know That The Good Opinion I Have Of Myself Has Only Been Reached After Mature Consideration.

You Have No Idea How Life-giving It Is To Find Around One A Youth That Agrees Not To Bury One On The Spot.

Shadow Is A Colour As Light Is, But Less Brilliant; Light And Shadow Are Only The Relation Of Two Tones.

To Paint Is Not To Copy The Object Slavishly, It Is To Grasp A Harmony Among Many Relationships.

One Does Not Substitute Oneself For The Past, One Merely Adds To It A New Link.

Sometimes I Imagine Colors As If They Were Living Ideas, Being Of Pure Reason With Which To Communicate. Nature Is Not On The Surface, It Is Deep Down.

I Have Nothing To Hide In Art. The Initial Force Alone Can Bring Anyone To The End He Must Attain.

May I Repeat What I Told You Here: Treat Nature By Means Of The Cylinder, The Sphere, The Cone, Everything Brought Into Proper Perspective So That Each Side Of An Object Or A Plane Is Directed Towards A Central Point. Lines Parallel To The Horizon Give Breadth... Lines Perpendicular To This Horizon Give Depth. But Nature For Us Men Is More Depth Than Surface, Whence The Need To Introduce Into Our Light Vibrations, Represented By The Reds And Yellows, A Sufficient Amount Of Blueness To Give The Feel Of Air.

If I Were Called Upon To Define Briefly The Word Art, I Should Call It The Reproduction Of What The Senses Preceive In Nature, Seen Through The Veil Of The Soul.

It Is Not About Painting Life, It Is About Making Painting Alive.

Literature Expresses Itself By Abstractions, Whereas Painting, By Means Of Drawing And Colour, Gives Concrete Shape To Sensations And Perceptions.

Drawing And Color Are Not Separate At All; In So Far As You Paint, You Draw. The More Color Harmonizes, The More Exact The Drawing Becomes. When The Color Achieves Richness, The Form Attains Its Fullness Also

I Want To Die Painting.

One Had To Immerse Oneself In One's Surroundings And Intensely Study Nature Or One's Subject To Understand How To Recreate It.

I Cannot Attain The Intensity That Is Unfolded Before My Senses. I Have Not The Magnificent Richness Of Colouring That Animates Nature.

The Louvre Is The Book In Which We Learn To Read. We Must Not, However, Be Satisfied With Retaining The Beautiful Formulas Of Our Illustrious Predecessors. Let Us Go Forth To Study Beautiful Nature, Let Us Try To Free Our Mids From Them, Let Us Strive To Express Ourselves According To Our Personal Temperaments. Time And Reflection, Moreover, Little By Little Modify Our Vision, And At Last Comprehension Comes To Us.

To Be Sure An Artist Wishes To Raise His Standard Intellectually As Much As Possible, But The Man Must Remain In Obscurity. Pleasure Must Be Found In The Studying.

When A Picture Isn't Realized, You Pitch It In The Fire And Start Another One!

The World Doesn't Understand Me And I Don't Understand The World, That's Why I've Withdrawn From It.

Art First Of All Is Optical. That's Where The Material Of Our Art Is: In What Our Eyes Think.

The Louvre Is The Book In Which We Learn To Read.

An Art Which Isn't Based On Feeling Isn't An Art At All.

The Artist Must Scorn All Judgment That Is Not Based On An Intelligent Observation Of Character. He Must Beware Of The Literary Spirit Which So Often Causes A Painting To Deviate From Its True Path - The Concrete Study Of Nature - To Lose Itself All Too Long In Intangible Speculations.

Right Now A Moment Of Time Is Passing By!... We Must Become That Moment.

I Wished To Copy Nature. I Could Not. But I Was Satisfied When I Discovered The Sun, For Instance, Could Not Be Reproduced, But Only Represented By Something Else.

Under This Fine Rain I Breathe In The Innocence Of The World. I Feel Coloured By The Nuances Of Infinity. At This Moment I Am One With My Picture. We Are An Iridescent Chaos.

It Took Me 40 Years To Find Out That Painting Is Not Sculpture.

If I Think, I Am Lost.

One Is Neither Too Scrupulous Nor Too Sincere Nor Too Submissive To Nature; But One Is More Or Less Master Of One's Model, And, Above All, Of The Means Of Expression.

I Wish To Die Painting.

I'd Like To Combine Melancholy And Sunshine... There's A Sadness In Provence Which No One Has Expressed... I'd Like To Put Reason In The Grass And Tears In The Sky, Like Poussin.

I'll Always Be Grateful To The Public Of Intelligent Amateurs.

What Is One To Think Of Those Fools Who Tell One That The Artist Is Always Subordinate To Nature? Art Is A Harmony Parallel With Nature.

You Have To Hurry Up If You Want To See Something, Everything Disappears.

I Am The Primitive Of The Method I Have Invented.

I Am A Pupil Of Pissarro.

Time And Reflection Change The Sight Little By Little 'till We Come To Understand.

One Must See One's Model Correctly And Experience It In The Right Way; And Furthermore Express Oneself Forcibly And With Distinction.

In Order To Make Progress, There Is Only Nature, And The Eye Is Turned Through Contact With Her.

I Am More A Friend Of Art Than A Producer Of Painting.

The Awareness Of Our Own Strength Makes Us Modest.

Michelangelo Is A Constructor, And Rafael An Artist Who, Great As He Is, Is Always Limited By The Model. When He Tries To Be Thoughtful He Falls Below The Niveau Of His Great Rival.

Knowledge Of The Means To Express Our Emotion Is Essential- And Is Acquired Only After A Very Long Experience.

I Allow No One To Touch Me.

Is Art Really The Priesthood That Demands The Pure In Heart Who Belong To It Wholly?

I Lack The Magnificent Richness Of Color That Animates Nature.

Nature Is More Depth Than Surface, The Colours Are The Expressions On The Surface Of This Depth; They Rise Up From The Roots Of The World.

I Owe You The Truth In Painting, And I Will Tell It To You.

There Is No Light Painting Or Dark Painting, But Simply Relations Of Tones.

I Must Be More Sensible And Realize That At My Age, Illusions Are Hardly Permitted And They Will Always Destroy Me.

The Landscape Thinks Itself In Me And I Am Its Consciousness.

Two Sittings A Day Of My Models And I'm Totally Exhausted.

I Have Sworn To Die Painting.

Is It The Factitious And The Conventional That Most Surely Succeed On Earth And In The Course Of Life?

Art Is A Harmony Parallel With Nature.

When I Judge Art, I Take My Painting And Put It Next To A God Made Object Like A Tree Or Flower. If It Clashes, It Is Not Art.

All The Theories Mess You Up Inside.

The Painter Unfolds That Which Has Not Been Seen.

People Think How A Sugar Basin Has No Physiognomy, No Soul. But It Changes Every Day.

Pure Drawing Is An Abstraction.

Whoever The Master Is Whom You Prefer, This Must Only Be A Directive For You. Otherwise You Will Never Be Anything But An Imitator.

The Louvre Is A Good Book To Consult, But It Must Only Be An Intermediary. The Real And Immense Study That Must Be Taken Up Is The Manifold Picture Of Nature.

I Paint As If I Were Rothschild.

What I Am Trying To Translate To You Is More Mysterious, It Is Entwined In The Very Roots Of Being, In The Implacable Source Of Sensations.

With A Painter's Temperament, All That's Needed Are The Means Of Expression Sufficient To Be Intelligible To The Wide Public.

It Is Necessary To Introduce Light Vibrations, Represented By Reds And Yellows, And A Sufficient Amount Of Blues, To Obtain An Airy Feeling.

It's Not Just About Looking And Copying, It's About Feeling Too

Optics, Developing In Us Through Study, Teach Us To See.

An Optical Impression Is Produced On Our Organs Of Sight Which Makes Us Classify As Light, Half-tone Or Quartertone, The Surfaces Represented By Colour Sensations. So That Light Does Not Exist For The Painter.

There Is No Such Thing As An Amateur Artist As Different From A Professional Artist. There Is Only Good Art And Bad Art.

My Nervous System Is Enfeebled, Only Work In Oils Can Sustain Me.

If Isolation Tempers The Strong, It Is The Stumbling-block Of The Uncertain.

Painting, Like Any Art, Comprises A Technique, A Workmanlike Handling Of Material, But The Accuracy Of A Tone And The Fictitious Combination Of Effects Depend Entirely On The Choice Made By The Artist.

Everything In Nature Takes Its Form From The Sphere, The Cone And The Cylinder.

A Thousand Painters Ought To Be Killed Yearly. Say What You Like: I'm Every Inch A Painter.

I Am Progressing Very Slowly, For Nature Reveals Herself To Me In Very Complex Forms; And The Progress Needed Is Incessant.

Get To The Heart Of What Is Before You And Continue To Express Yourself As Logically As Possible.

Express Yourself

I Have Not Tried To Reproduce Nature; I Have Represented It.

Painting Is Founded On The Heart Controlled By The Head.

I Have To Keep Working, Not To Arrive At Finish, Which Arouses The Admiration Of Fools... I Must Seek Completion Only For The Pleasure Of Being Truer And More Knowing.

Chatter About Art Is Almost Always Useless.

The Landscape Becomes Human, Becomes A Thinking, Living Being Within Me. I Become One With My Picture...we Merge In An Iridescent Chaos.

With An Apple I Will Astonish Paris.

I Could Paint For A Hundred Years, A Thousand Years Without Stopping And I Would Still Feel As Though I Knew Nothing.

Taste Is The Best Judge. It Is Rare. Art Only Addresses Itself To An Excessively Small Number Of Individuals.

The Truth Is In Nature, And I Shall Prove It.

Nature Is The Best Instructor.

Yes, A Bunch Of Carrots, Observed Directly, Painted Simply In The Personal Way One Sees It, Worth More Than The Ecole's Everlasting Slices Of Buttered Bread, That Tobacco-juice Painting, Slavishly Done By The Book? The Day Is Coming When A Single Original Carrot Will Give Birth To A Revolution.

We Must Not Be Content To Memorize The Beautiful Formulas Of Our Illustrious Predecessors. Let Us Go Out And Study Beautiful Nature.

Monet Is Only An Eye, But My God, What An Eye!

Keep Good Company - That Is, Go To The Louvre.

I Am Not Altogether Displeased With The Shirt-front.

When I Start Thinking, All Is Lost.

Studying The Model And Realizing It Is Sometimes Very Slow In Coming For The Artist.

See Nature In Terms Of The Cone, The Cylinder, And The Sphere.

It's So Fine And Yet So Terrible To Stand In Front Of A Blank Canvas.

Everything Is About To Disappear. You've Got To Hurry Up If You Still Want To See Things.

Fruits ... Like Having Their Portrait Painted. They Seem To Sit There And Ask Your Forgiveness For Fading. Their Thought Is Given Off With Their Perfumes. They Come With All Their Scents, They Speak Of The Fields They Have Left, The Rain Which Has Nourished Them, The Daybreaks They Have Seen.

To Achieve Progress Nature Alone Counts, And The Eye Is Trained Through Contact With Her. It Becomes Concentric By Looking And Working.

I Ask You To Pray For Me, For Once Age Has Overtaken Us, We Find Consolation Only In Religion.

Painting Is Damned Difficult - You Always Think You've Got It, But You Haven't.

It Is Impossible For Emotion Not To Come On Us In Thinking Of That Time Now Flowed Away.

Shut Your Eyes, Wait, Think Of Nothing. Now, Open Them ... One Sees Nothing But A Great Coloured Undulation. What Then? An Irradiation And Glory Of Colour. This Is What A Picture Should Give Us ... An Abyss In Which The Eye Is Lost, A Secret Germination, A Coloured State Of Grace ... Loose Conciousness. Descend With The Painter Into The Dim Tangled Roots Of Things, And Rise Again From Them In Colours, Be Steeped In The Light Of Them.

I Should Have Wished To Possess The Intellectual Equilibrium That Characterizes You And Permits You To Achieve Without Fail The Desired End... Chance Has Not Favoured Me With An Equal Self-assurance, It Is The Only Regret I Have About Things Of This Earth.

Here On The Edge Of The River, The Motifs Are Very Plentiful, The Same Subject Seen From A Different Angle Gives A Subject For Study Of The Highest Interest And So Varied That I Think I Could Be Occupied For Months Without Changing My Place, Simply Bending A Little More To The Right Or Left.

You Must Think. The Eye Is Not Enough; It Needs To Think As Well.

Drawing And Color Are By No Means Two Different Things. As You Paint, You Draw... When Color Is At Its Richest, Form Is At Its Fullest.

Pure Drawing Is An Abstraction. Drawing And Colour Are Not Distinct, Everything In Nature Is Coloured.

For An Impressionist To Paint From Nature Is Not To Paint The Subject, But To Realize Sensations.

I Am Still Searching For The Expression Of Those Confused Sensations That We Bring With Us At Birth.

Here, On The River's Verge, I Could Be Busy For Months Without Changing My Place, Simply Leaning A Little More To Right Or Left.

Time And Reflection... Modify, Little By Little, Our Vision, And At Last Comprehension Comes To Us.

Surely, A Single Bunch Of Carrots Painted Naively, Just As We Personally See It, Is Worth All The Endless Banalities Of The Schools, All Those Dreary Pictures Concocted Out Of Tobacco Juice According To Time-honored Formulas?

If I Think, Everything Is Lost.

There Is A Logic Of Colors, And It Is With This Alone, And Not With The Logic Of The Brain, That The Painter Should Conform.

Perhaps I Was Born Too Early. I Was More The Painter Of Your Generation Than Of Mine.

Design And Color Are Not Distinct And Separate. As One Paints, One Draws. The More The Colors Harmonize, The More The Design Takes Form. When Color Is At It's Richest, Form Is At Its Fullest.

The Painter Must Enclose Himself Within His Work; He Must Respond Not With Words, But With Paintings.

My Age And Health Will Never Allow Me To Realize The Dream Of Art I've Been Pursuing All My Life.

Treat Nature By The Cylinder, The Sphere, The Cone, Everything In Proper Perspective So That Each Side Of An Object Or A Plane Is Directed Towards A Central Point.

One Can Do Good Things Without Being Very Much Of A Harmonist Or A Colourist. It Is Sufficient To Have A Sense Of Art - And This Sense Is Doubtless The Horror Of The Bourgeois.

Pleasure Must Be Found In Study.

The Day Is Coming When A Single Carrot, Freshly Observed, Will Set Off A Revolution.

Genius Is The Ability To Renew One's Emotions In Daily Experience.

When The Color Achieves Richness, The Form Attains Its Fullness Also.

Everything In Nature Is Formed Upon The Sphere, The Cone And The Cylinder. One Must Learn To Paint These Simple Figures And Then One Can Do All That He May Wish.

The Transposition That A Painter Makes With An Original Vision Gives To The Representation Of Nature A New Interest.

The Most Seductive Thing About Art Is The Personality Of The Artist Himself.

We Live In A Rainbow Of Chaos.

Long Live The Sun Which Gives Us Such Beautiful Color.

The Sun Penetrates Me Soundlessly Like A Distant Friend That Stirs Up My Laziness, Fertilizes It. We Bring Forth Life.

You Say A New Era In Art Is Preparing; You Sensed It Coming; Continue Your Studies Without Weakening. God Will Do The Rest.

The Artist Makes Things Concrete And Gives Them Individuality.

Right Now A Moment Of Time Is Fleeting By! Capture Its Reality In Paint! To Do That We Must Put All Else Out Of Our Minds. We Must Become That Moment, Make Ourselves A Sensitive Recording Plate...give The Image Of What We Actually See, Forgetting Everything That Has Been Seen Before Our Time.

Don't Be An Art Critic. Paint. There Lies Salvation.

Painting From Nature Is Not Copying The Object; It Is Realizing One's Sensations.

Light Is A Thing That Cannot Be Reproduced, But Must Be Represented By Something Else - By Color.

There Are Two Things In The Painter, The Eye And The Mind; Each Of Them Should Aid The Other.

There Is No Model, There Is Only Color.

Doubtless There Are Things In Nature Which Have Not Yet Been Seen. If An Artist Discovers Them, He Opens The Way For His Successors.

I've Come To The Conclusion That It's Not Really Possible To Help Others.

I Advance All Of My Canvas At One Time.

The Clear French Landscape Is As Pure As A Verse Of Racine.

The Approbation Of Others Is A Stimulus Of Which One Must Sometimes Be Wary. The Feeling Of One's Own Strength Makes One Modest.

See How The Light Tenderly Love The Apricots, It Takes Them Over Completely, Enters Into Their Pulp, Light Them From All Sides! But It Is Miserly With The Peaches And Light Only One Side Of Them.

All Pictures Painted Inside In The Studio Will Never Be As Good As The Things Done Outside.

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