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The Fact That For A Long Time Cubism Has Not Been Understood And That Even Today There Are People Who Cannot See Anything In It Means Nothing. I Do Not Read English, An English Book Is A Blank Book To Me. This Does Not Mean That The English Language Does Not Exist. Why Should I Blame Anyone But Myself If I Cannot Understand What I Know Nothing About?" -pablo Picasso.

-Pablo Picasso

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The Fact That For

Pablo Picasso

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The Fact That For A Long Time Cubism Has Not Been Understood And That Even Today There Are People Who Cannot See Anything In It Means Nothing. I Do Not Read English, An English Book Is A Blank Book To Me. This Does Not Mean That The English Language Does Not Exist. Why Should I Blame Anyone But Myself If I Cannot Understand What I Know Nothing About?" -pablo Picasso.

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The Only Pictorial Matter That Is Of Interest To Me Is The Matter And Sentiments Brought About By The Work Itself.

I Paint The Way Someone Bites His Fingernails; For Me, Painting Is A Bad Habit Because I Don't Know Nor Can I Do Anything Else.

Today, As You Know, I Am Famous And Very Rich. But When I Am Alone With Myself, I Haven't The 'courage' To Consider Myself An Artist, In The Great And Ancient Sense Of That Word... I Am Only A Public Entertainer, Who Understands His Age.

Art Is A Finger Up The Bourgeoisie Ass.

Today We Haven't The Heart To Expel The Painters And Poets From Society Because We Refuse To Admit To Ourselves That There Is Any Danger In Keeping Them In Our Midst.

I Have Never Made Radically Different Experiments. Whenever I Wanted To Say Something, I Said It The Way I Believed I Should.

It's Insane How Many Roman Coins Are Being Found! It's As If All Romans Had Holes In Their Pockets. They Sowed Coins Wherever They Went. Even In The Fields. Maybe To Grow Money . . .

Every Positive Value Has Its Price In Negative Terms... The Genius Of Einstein Leads To Hiroshima.

Hiroshima And Nagasaki

If I Like It, I Say It's Mine. If I Don't I Say It's A Fake.

You Cannot Go Against Nature. She Is Stronger Than The Strongest Of Men. We Can Permit Ourselves Some Liberties, But In Details Only.

Drink To Me. Drink To My Health. You Know I Can't Drink Any More.

It Took Me A Lifetime.

Neither Is There Figurative And Non-figurative Art. All Things Appear To Us In The Shape Of Forms. Even In Metaphysics Ideas Are Expressed By Forms. Well Then, Think How Absurd It Would Be To Think Of Painting Without The Imagery Of Forms. A Figure, An Object, A Circle, Are Forms; They Affect Us More Or Less Intensely.

From The Point Of View Of Art, There Are No Concrete Or Abstract Forms, But Only Forms Which Are More Or Less Convincing Lies.

The Artist Is A Receptacle For 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.

I Have Never Had Time For The Idea Of Searching. Whenever I Wanted To Express Something, I Did So Without Thinking Of The Past Or The Future.

To Model An Object Is To Possess It.

You Can Go To The Moon Or Walk Under The Sea, Or Anything Else You Like, But Painting Remains Painting Because It Eludes Such Investigation. It Remains There Like A Question. And It Alone Gives The Answer.

The Urge To Destroy Is Also A Creative Urge.

When I Paint I Feel That All The Artists Of The Past Are Behind Me.

The Earth Doesn't Have A Housekeeper To Do The Dusting. And The Dust That Falls On It Every Day Remains There. Everything That's Come Down To Us From The Past Has Been Conserved By Dust.

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.

Through Education Comes Understanding. Through Understanding Comes True Appreciation. All Children Are Artists. The Problem Is How To Remain An Artist Once He Grows Up.

I Paint The Way Some People Write An Autobiography. The Paintings, Finished Or Not, Are The Pages From My Diary.

Academic Training In Beauty Is A Sham. We Have Been So Deceived, But So Well Deceived That We Can Scarcely Get Back Even A Shadow Of The Truth.

To Know What You’re Going To Draw, You Have To Begin Drawing... When I Find Myself Facing A Blank Page, That’s Always Going Through My Head. What I Capture In Spite Of Myself Interests Me More Than My Own Ideas.

We Must Pick Out What Is Good For Us Where We Can Find It.

Class Distinction

Are We To Paint What's On The Face, What's Inside The Face, Or What's Behind It?

The People Who Make Art Their Business Are Mostly Imposters.

When I Was A Kid I Drew Like Michelangelo. It Took Me Years To Learn To Draw Like A Kid.

In Art Intentions Are Not Sufficient And, As We Say In Spanish, Love Must Be Proved By Deeds And Not By Reasons. What One Does Is What Counts And Not What One Had The Intention Of Doing.

I'm A Joker Who Has Understood His Epoch And Has Extracted All He Possibly Could From The Stupidity, Greed And Vanity Of His Contemporaries.

In Art, There Is Neither Past Nor Future. The Art That Is Not In The Present Will Never Be.

When I Die, It Will Be A Shipwreck, And As When A Huge Ship Sinks, Many People All Around Will Be Sucked Down With It.

When I Am Told I Am Too Old To Do Something, I Try To Do It Right Away.

I Must Keep On Trying, Just To Keep The Experiment Going Until I Get Tired Of It All. Even If The Last Result Is Not Necessarily The Best, I Stop When My Interest In The Problem Wanes.

Art Is Lies That Tell The Truth.

Telling The Truth

It Is A Well-known Fact That We See The Faults In Other's Works More Readily Than We Do In Our Own.

It Is Personality With A Penny's Worth Of Talent. Error Which Chances To Rise Above The Commonplace.

The Hidden Harmony Is Better Than The Obvious.

If Only We Could Pull Out Our Brain And Use Only Our Eyes.

We Don't Grow Older, We Grow Riper.

It's Always Necessary To Seek For Perfection. Obviously, For Us, This Word No Longer Has The Same Meaning. To Me, It Means: From One Canvas To The Next, Always Go Further, Further.

When I Haven't Any Blue I Use Red.

It Is Your Work In Life That Is The Ultimate Seduction.

Without Great Solitude No Serious Work Is Possible.

When German Soldiers Used To Come To My Studio And Look At My Pictures Of Guernica, They'd Ask 'did You Do This?'. And I'd Say, 'no, You Did.'

Painting Isn't A Question Of Sensibility; It's A Matter Of Seizing The Power, Taking Over From Nature, Not Expecting Her To Supply You With Information And Good Advice.

Art Is A Lie That Makes Us Realize Truth.

I Am A Communist And My Painting Is A Communist Painting. But If I Were A Shoemaker, Royalist Or Communist Or Anything Else, I Would Not Necessarily Hammer My Shoes In Any Special Way To Show My Politics.

The Fact That For A Long Time Cubism Has Not Been Understood And That Even Today There Are People Who Cannot See Anything In It Means Nothing. I Do Not Read English, An English Book Is A Blank Book To Me. This Does Not Mean That The English Language Does Not Exist. Why Should I Blame Anyone But Myself If I Cannot Understand What I Know Nothing About?" -pablo Picasso.

Motivation Is In The World Around Us. We Have An Infinite Amount Of Material At Our Disposal, In The Lives Of Those We Meet, In What We See And Feel, In What We Discuss And From The Passion Of Every Woman.

There Are Chemists Who Spend Their Whole Lives Trying To Find Out What's In A Lump Of Sugar. I Want To Know One Thing. What Is Color?

Art Isn't Done To Decorate Apartments, But To Wage War Against The Enemy.

A Painting Only Lives In The Eye Of The Beholder

You Mustn't Expect Me To Repeat Myself. My Past Doesn't Interest Me. I Would Rather Copy Others Than Copy Myself. In That Way I Should At Least Be Giving Them Something New. I Love Discovering Things.

If You Have Five Elements Available Use Only Four. If You Have Four Elements Use Three.

Work Is A Necessity For Man. Man Invented The Alarm Clock.

That Inspiration Comes, Does Not Depend On Me. The Only Thing I Can Do Is Make Sure It Catches Me Working.

In The End There Is Only Matisse.

We Have A Definite But Unknown Quantity Of Experience At Our Disposal. As Soon As The Hourglass Is Turned, The Sand Will Begin To Run Out And Once It Starts, It Cannot Stop Until It's All Gone.

Reality Is To Be Found In Lightness And Darkness.

My Friends Back In Barcelona Called Me By That Name (picasso). It Was Stranger, More Resonant, Than "ruiz." And Those Are Probably The Reasons I Adopted It. Do You Know What Appealed To Me About That Name? Well, It Was Undoubtedly The Double S, Which Is Fairly Unusual In Spain.

Inspiration Exists, But It Has To Find Us Working.

Whatever Is Most Abstract May Perhaps Be The Summit Of Reality.

It Is My Misfortune - And Probably My Delight - To Use Things As My Passions Tell Me. What A Miserable Fate For A Painter Who Adores Blondes To Have To Stop Himself Putting Them Into A Picture Because They Don't Go With The Basket Of Fruit! . . . I Put All The Things I Like Into My Pictures. The Things - So Much The Worse For Them. They Just Have To Put Up With It.

I Want To Know One Thing, What Is Color?

I Hate That Aesthetic Game Of The Eye And The Mind, Played By These Connoisseurs, These Mandarins Who "appreciate" Beauty. What Is Beauty, Anyway? There's No Such Thing. I Never "appreciate," Any More Than I "like." I Love It Or I Hate.

The First Half Of Life Is Learning To Be An Adult-the Second Half Is Learning To Be A Child.

If I Could Say This I Wouldn't Have To Paint.

There Are Painters Who Transform The Sun To A Yellow Spot, But There Are Others Who With The Help Of Their Art And Their Intelligence, Transform A Yellow Spot Into Sun

The Trouble Is, We've Been Taught What To See And How To Render What We See. If Only We Could Be In The Position Of Those Men Who Did Those Wonderful Drawings In Lascaux And Altimira!

When You Are Young And Without Success, You Have Only A Few Friends. Then, Later On, When You Are Rich And Famous, You Still Have A Few... If You Are Lucky.

The Meaning Of Life Is To Find Your Gift. The Purpose Of Life Is To Give It Away.

There's No Such Thing As A Bad Picasso, But Some Are Less Good Than Others.

What I Find Horrible Nowadays Is That People Are Always Trying To Find A Personality For Themselves. Nobody Bothers About What You Might Call A Painter's Ideal... The Kind That's Always Existed... No. They Couldn't Care Less About That.

Why Do Two Colors, Put One Next To The Other, Sing?

To Make Oneself Hated Is More Difficult Than To Make Oneself Loved.

A Picture Is Not Thought Out And Settled Beforehand. While It Is Being Done It Changes As One's Thoughts Change.

I Work With Few Colors, What Creates The Illusion Of Quantity Is That They Fell In The Right Place.

Let Them Understand Above All That The Artist Works From Necessity; That He, Too, Is A Minute Element Of The World To Whom One Should Ascribe No More Importance Than So Many Things In Nature Which Charm Us But Which We Do Not Explain To Ourselves.

All Art Is Subversive.

Everyone Wants To Understand Art. Why Not Try To Understand The Song Of A Bird? Why Does One Love The Night, Flowers, Everything Around One, Without Trying To Understand Them? But In The Case Of A Painting People Have To Understand. If Only They Would Realize Above All That An Artist Works Of Necessity, That He Himself Is Only A Trifling Bit Of The World, And That No More Importance Should Be Attached To Him Than To Plenty Of Other Things Which Please Us In The World, Though We Can't Explain Them. People Who Try To Explain Pictures Are Usually Barking Up The Wrong Tree.

If I Knew What The Meaning Of Art Was, I Wouldn't Tell You.

Enough Of Art. It's Art That Kills Us. People No Longer Want To Do Painting: They Make Art.

When I Am Finished Painting, I Paint Again For Relaxation.

If You Are A Genius And Unsuccessful, Everybody Treats You As If You Were A Genius, But When You Come To Be Successful, When You Commence To Earn Money, When You Are Really Successful, Then Your Family And Everybody No Longer Treats You Like A Genius, They Treat You Like A Man Who Has Become Successful.

When We Did Cubist Paintings, Our Intention Was Not To Produce Cubist Paintings But To Express What Was Within Us. No One Laid Down A Course Of Action For Us, And Our Friends The Poets Followed Our Endeavour Attentively But They Never Dictated It To Us.

When We Discovered Cubism, We Did Not Have The Aim Of Discovering Cubism. We Only Wanted To Express What Was In Us.

Cubism Is Not A Reality You Can Take In Your Hand. It's More Like A Perfume, In Front Of You, Behind You, To The Sides, The Scent Is Everywhere But You Don’t Quite Know Where It Comes From.

In Life You Throw A Ball. You Hope It Will Reach A Wall And Bounce Back So You Can Throw It Again. You Hope Your Friends Will Provide That Wall.

I Simply Painted Images Of What Was Before My Eyes; It Is For Others To Find Hidden Meaning In Them.

People Want To Find A 'meaning' In Everything And Everyone. That's The Disease Of Our Age...

For A Long Time I Limited Myself To One Colour - As A Form Of Discipline.

...why Did Plato Say That Poets Should Be Chased Out Of The Republic? Precisely Because Every Poet And Every Artist Is An Antisocial Being. He's Not That Way Because He Wants To Be; He Can't Be Any Other Way.... And If He Really Is An Artist It Is In His Nature Not To Want To Be Admitted, Because If He Is Admitted It Can Only Mean He Is Doing Something Which Is Understood, Approved, And Therefore Old Hat - Worthless. Anything New, Anything Worth Doing, Can't Be Recognized.

To Draw You Must Close Your Eyes And Sing.

Never Permit A Dichotomy To Rule Your Life, A Dichotomy In Which You Hate What You Do So You Can Have Pleasure In Your Spare Time. Look For A Situation In Which Your Work Will Give You As Much Happiness As Your Spare Time.

If It's Good, It's Mine. If It's Bad, It's A Fake.

Whatever The Source Of Emotion That Drives Me To Create, I Want To Give It A Form Which Has Some Connection With The Visible World, Even If It Is Only To Wage War On That World....i Want My Paintings To Be Able To Defend Themselves To Resist The Invader, Just As Though There Were Razor Blades On All Surfaces So No One Could Touch Them Without Cutting His Hands.

Forcing Yourself To Use Restricted Means Is The Sort Of Restraint That Liberates Invention. It Obliges You To Make A Kind Of Progress That You Can't Even Imagine In Advance.

I Have Discovered Photography. Now I Can Kill Myself. I Have Nothing Else To Learn.

I Deal With Painting As I Deal With Things, I Paint A Window Just As I Look Out Of A Window. If An Open Window Looks Wrong In A Picture, I Draw The Curtain And Shut It, Just As I Would In My Own Room. In Painting, As In Life, You Must Act Directly.

Every Act Of Creation Is First An Act Of Destruction.

Inspiration Exists, But You Have To Find It Working.

Paintings Are But Research And Experiment. I Never Do A Painting As A Work Of Art. All Of Them Are Researches. I Search Constantly And There Is A Logical Sequence In All This Research.

Abstract Art Is Only Painting. And What's So Dramatic About That? There Is No Abstract Art. One Must Always Begin With Something. Afterwards One Can Remove All Semblance Of Reality; There Is No Longer Any Danger As The Idea Of The Object Has Left An Indelible Imprint.

You Mustn't Always Believe What I Say. Questions Tempt You To Tell Lies, Particularly When There Is No Answer.

Art Is Not Chaste. Those Ill Prepared Should Be Allowed No Contact With Art. Art Is Dangerous. If It Is Chaste, It Is Not Art.

Art Washes Away From The Soul The Dust Of Everyday Life.

Now There Is Fame! Of All - Hunger, Misery, The Incomprehension By The Public - Fame Is By Far The Worst. It Is The Castigation Of God By The Artist. It Is Sad. It Is True.

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 Convince Others Of The Truthfulness Of His Lies.

If Everyone Would Paint, Political Re-education Would Be Unnecessary.

I Paint What I Think, Not What I See.

To Be Young, Really Young, Takes A Very Long Time.

I'm Not A Developer; I Am.

In One Way Or Another, I Always Marked My Pictures. But There Were Times When I Put My Signature On The Back Of The Canvas. All My Works From The Cubist Period, Until About 1914, Have My Name And The Date On The Back Side Of The Stretcher. I Know Someone Spread The Story That In Céret, Braque And I Decided Not To Sign Our Pictures Anymore. But That's Just A Legend!

...the Right To Free Expression Is Something One Seizes, Not Something One Is Given.... If It Does Exist, It Exists To Be Used Against The Established Order.... There Is Absolute Opposition Between The Artist And The State.

If I Were To Sign It Now, I'd Be Committing Forgery. I'd Be Putting My 1943 Signature On A Canvas Painted In 1922.

As Far As I Am Concerned, A Painting Speaks For Itself. What Is The Use Of Giving Explanations, When All Is Said And Done? A Painter Has Only One Language.

The Chief Enemy Of Creativity Is 'good' Sense.

I Don't Know In Advance What I Am Going To Put On Canvas Any More Than I Decide Beforehand What Colours I Am Going To Use.

I Am Only A Public Entertainer Who Understands His Time.

Youth Has No Age.

For Me, There Are Two Kinds Of Women - Goddesses And Doormats.

We Didn't Want To Sign The Painting Itself, That Would Have Interfered With The Composition. And Even Later, For That Reason Or For Another, I Sometimes Marked My Canvases On The Back. If You Don't See My Signature And The Date, Madam, It's Because The Frame Is Hiding It.

Others Have Seen What Is And Asked Why. I Have Seen What Could Be And Asked Why Not.

Sculpture Is The Art Of The Intelligence.

Give Me A Museum And I'll Fill It.

It Isn't Up To The Painter To Define The Symbols. Otherwise It Would Be Better If He Wrote Them Out In So Many Words! The Public Who Look At The Picture Must Interpret The Symbols As They Understand Them.

I Have Had No True Friends, Only Lovers.

I've Reached The Moment Where The Movement Of My Thought Interests Me More Than The Thought Itself.

Everyone Wants To Understand Art. Why Don't We Try To Understand The Song Of A Bird? Why Do We Love The Night, The Flowers, Everything Around Us, Without Trying To Understand Them? But In The Case Of A Painting, People Think They Have To Understand.

Imitators? All Right! Disciples If You Like. But Disciples Be Damned. It's Not Interesting.

I Don't Own Any Of My Own Paintings Because A Picasso Original Costs Several Thousand Dollars And That's A Luxury I Cannot Afford.

But When I Am Alone, I Do Not Have The Effrontery To Consider Myself An Artist At All, Not In The Grand Old Meaning Of The Word: Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt, Goya Were Great Painters. I Am Only A Public Clown-a Mountebank. I Have Understood My Time And Have Exploited The Imbecility, The Vanity, The Greed Of My Contemporaries. It Is A Bitter Confession, This Confession Of Mine, More Painful Than It May Seem. But At Least And At Last It Does Have The Merit Of Being Honest.

I Try To Paint What I Have Found And Not What I Look For. In Art, Intentions Are Of Little Importance.

By Amusing Myself With All These Games, All This Nonsense, All These Picture Puzzles, I Became Famous... I Am Only A Public Entertainer Who Has Understood His Time.

It Seems Strange To Me That Someone Thought Of Making Marble Statues.

It Is Important To Remember That Great Things Have No Fear Of Time. We've Got To Let Go Of The Idea That What We Want To Manifest Has To Be Done On Our Time Schedule.

What Do You Think An Artist Is? ...he Is A Political Being, Constantly Aware Of The Heart Breaking, Passionate, Or Delightful Things That Happen In The World, Shaping Himself Completely In Their Image. Painting Is Not Done To Decorate Apartments. It Is An Instrument Of War.

Everyone Wants To Understand Art. Why Not Try To Understand The Song Of A Bird? ...people Who Try To Explain Pictures Are Usually Barking Up The Wrong Tree.

Don't Waste Your Youth Growing Up.

I Don't Develop; I Am.

The Path To Youth Takes A Lifetime.

Art Is Not Truth; Art Is The Lie Which Makes Us See The Truth.

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.

To Arrive At Abstraction, It Is Always Necessary To Begin With A Concrete Reality.

Braque Always Said That The Only Thing That Counts, In Painting, Is The Intention, And It's True. What Counts Is What One Wants To Do, And Not What One Does. That's What's Important.

My Whole Life Has Been Nothing More Than A Continuous Struggle Against Reaction And The Death Of Art.

Computers Are Useless. They Can Only Give You Answers.

Beauty? To Me It Is A Word Without Sense Because I Do Not Know Where Its Meaning Comes From Nor Where It Leads To.

Beautiful Women

An Artist Must Forget Painting When He Paints. That's The Only Way He Will Do Original Work.

So There's Only One Tactic For The State: Kill The Seers.

When Art Critics Get Together They Talk About Form And Structure And Meaning. When Artists Get Together They Talk About Where You Can Buy Cheap Turpentine.

They Ought To Put Out The Eyes Of Painters As They Do Goldfinches In Order That They Can Sing Better.

What Is Conserved In The Ground? Stone, Bronze, Ivory, Bone, Sometimes Pottery. Never Wood Objects, No Fabric Or Skins. That Completely Skews Our Notions About Primitive Man.

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.

Style Is Besides The Point. Nobody Would Pay Attention If One Always Said The Same Thing, In The Same Words And The Same Tone Of Voice.

Almost Every Evening, Either I Went To [georges] Braque's Studio Or Braque Came To Mine. Each Of Us Had To See What The Other Had Done During The Day. We Criticized Each Other's Work. A Canvas Wasn't Finished Unless Both Of Us Felt It Was.

What I Have To Do Is Utilize As Best I Can The Ideas Which Objects Suggest To Me, Connect, Fuse, And Color In My Way The Shadows They Cast Within Me, Illumine Them From The Inside. And Since Of Necessity My Vision Is Quite Different From That Of The Next Man, My Painting Will Interpret Things In An Entirely Different Manner Even Though It Makes Use Of The Same Elements.

Painting Is A Jeu D'esprit.

Learn The Rules Like A Pro, So You Can Break Them Like An Artist.

And Fame, For A Painter Means Sales, Gains, Fortune, Riches. And Today, As You Know, I Am Celebrated. I Am Rich.

One Must Act In Painting As In Life, Directly.

Paradise Is To Love Many Things With A Passion.

The Artist Must Know The Manner Whereby To Convince Others Of The Truthfulness Of His Lies.

I Begin With An Idea And Then It Becomes Something Else.

There Ought To Be An Absolute Dictatorship... A Dictatorship Of Painters... A Dictatorship Of One Painter... To Suppress All Those Who Have Betrayed Us.

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 It's At The Very Moment You Make A Botch Of It That You're Yourself.

The Artist Spends The First Part Of His Life With The Dead, The Second With The Living, And The Third With Himself.

When I Work I Relax; Doing Nothing Or Entertaining Visitors Makes Me Tired.

The Connoisseur Of Painting Gives Only Bad Advice To The Painter. For That Reason I Have Given Up Trying To Judge Myself.

He Was An Afghan Hound Name Kabul. Since Him I Have Had Other Afghan Hounds.... Perhaps I Am Looking For His Ghost. He Is The Only One That I Sometimes Think About. Often, If He Comes In To My Mind When I Am Working, It Alters What I Do. The Nose On The Face I Am Drawing Gets Longer And Sharper. The Hair Of The Woman I Am Sketching Gets Longer And Fluffy, Resting Against Her Cheeks Like His Ears Rested Against His Head.

Every Child Is An Artist. The Problem Is How To Remain An Artist While Still Achieving Milestones And Outcomes As Required By Certain Funders And Policy-makers.

The People No Longer Seek Consolation In Art. But The Refined People, The Rich, The Idlers Seek The New, The Extraordinary, The Extravagant, The Scandalous. I Have Contented These People With All The Many Bizarre Things That Come Into My Head. And The Less They Understand, The More They Admire It. By Amusing Myself With All These Games, All This Nonsense, All These Picture Puzzles, I Became Famous... I Am Only A Public Entertainer Who Has Understood His Time.

I Have Always Believed And Still Believe That Artists Who Live And Work With Spiritual Values Cannot And Should Not Remain Indifferent To The Conflict In Which The Highest Values Of Humanity And Civilization Are At Stake.

We Now Know That Art Is Not The Truth... But Rather A Way Of Approaching The Truth.

As An Artist, All I Need Is My Paints And Brushes - And Someone To Drag Me Away When The Canvas Is Done

What I Want Is That My Picture Should Evoke Nothing But Emotion.

We Have A Lot Of Reasons But Only One Real One.

Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal.

Basically The French Are All Peasants.

I Draw Like Other People Bite Their Nails.

Those Trying To Explain Pictures Are As A Rule Completely Mistaken.

I Don't Seek, I Find.

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.

For Being A Bad Student I Was Banished To The 'calaboose' - A Bare Cell With Whitewashed Walls And A Bench To Sit On. I Liked It There, Because I Took Along A Sketch Pad And Drew Incessantly I Could Have Stayed There Forever Drawing Without Stopping

I'd Like To Live As A Poor Man With Lots Of Money.

The Older You Get The Stronger The Wind Gets - And It's Always In Your Face.

They'll Sell You Thousands Of Greens. Veronese Green And Emerald Green And Cadmium Green And Any Sort Of Green You Like; But That Particular Green, Never.

A Plagiarist Steals From One Person. A True Artist Steals From Everybody.

I Put In My Pictures Everything I Like. So Much The Worse For The Things - They Have To Get Along With One Another.

Painting Isn't Made For The Decoration Of Apartments; It Is A Weapon To Be Used Offensively And Defensively Against The Enemy.

Have You Noticed That Bones Are Always Modeled And Not Carved, That You Always Have The Impression They Come From A Mold, That They Were First Modeled In Clay? Any Bone You Look At, You Always Find Fingerprints On It.

The Revolutionary Artist Does Not Only Focus On The Negative Aspects Of Capitalist Lives, But Also Creates Visions Of A Revolutionary Future.

How Could Michelangelo Have Seen His David In A Block Of Marble? Man Began To Make Images Only Because He Discovered Them Nearly Formed Around Him, Already Within Reach. He Saw Them In A Bone, In The Bumps Of A Cave, In A Piece Of Wood. One Form Suggested A Woman To Him, Another A Buffalo, Still Another The Head Of A Monster.

I Never Calculate. That Is Why Those Who Do, Calculate So Much Less Accurately Than I.

The More Technique There Is, The Less There Is

It's Not What The Artist Does That Counts; It's What He Is.

I Want To Create A Cat Like The Real Cats I See Crossing The Streets, Not Like Those You See In Houses. They Have Nothing In Common. The Cat Of The Streets Has Bristling Fur. It Runs Like A Fiend, And If It Looks At You, You Think It Is Going To Jump In Your Face.

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