Pablo Picasso Quotes
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You mustn't always believe what I say. Questions tempt you to tell lies, particularly when there is no answer. You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea.
Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter? 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. We don't grow older, we grow riper. We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth. We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given to us to understand.
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.
They ought to put out the eyes of painters as they do goldfinches in order that they can sing better. There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.
The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do? The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls. The people who make art their business are mostly imposters. The older you get the stronger the wind gets - and it's always in your face. The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about it. The more technique there is, the less there is.
The chief enemy of creativity is "good" sense. 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. 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. Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility. Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun. Sculpture is the best comment that a painter can make on painting. Sculpture is the art of the intelligence. Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.
Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success. Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not. Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone. One must act in painting as in life, directly.
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.
Love is the greatest refreshment in life. It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child. It takes a long time to become young.
Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working. If there were only one truth, you couldn't paint a hundred canvases on the same theme.
I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them. I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful? One must speak of problems in painting! I don't believe in accidents. There are only encounters in history. There are no accidents. I do not seek. I find. I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else. I am always doing things I can't do, that's how I get to do them. I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it. He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. This is an inexorable, indisputable law. God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephantand the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things. Give me a museum and I'll fill it. Everything you can imagine is real. Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one's bath like a lump of sugar Every positive value has its price in negative terms... the genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima. Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.
Disciples be damned. It's not interesting. It's only the masters that matter. Those who create. Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
Art is the elimination of the unnecessary. 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. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth. Are we to paint what's on the face, what's inside the face, or what's behind it? An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought. All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. Action is the foundational key to all success.
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