Henri Matisse Quotes Page 2
Best 55 Quotes by Henri Matisse – Page 2 of 2
“Instinct must be thwarted just as one prunes the branches of a tree so that it will grow better.”
“It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.”
“It is only after years of preparation that the young artist should touch color – not color used descriptively, that is, but as a means of personal expression.”
“Jazz is rhythm and meaning.”
“My curves are not crazy.”
“Nothing can be accomplished without love. ”
“Rodin once said that a combination of extraordinary circumstances was needed for a man to live to 70 and to pursue with passion what he loves.”
“The artist begins with a vision, a creative operation that requires effort. Creativity requires courage.”
“The essential thing is to spring forth, to express the bolt of lightning one senses upon contact with a thing. The function of the artist is not to translate an observation but to express the shock of the object on his nature; the shock, with the original reaction.”
“The importance of an artist is to be measured by the quantity of new signs which he has introduced to the language of art.”
“There are always flowers for those who wish to see them.”
“There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.”
“This is why journeys are useful, they enlarge the space that is around us.”
“Time extracts various values from a painter's work. When these values are exhausted the pictures are forgotten, and the more a picture has to give, the greater it is.”
“To arrive is to be in prison.”
“To look at something as though we had never seen it before requires great courage.”
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“If I paint a wild horse, you might not see the horse... but surely you will see the wildness!”
“We ought to view ourselves with the same curiosity and openness with which we study a tree, the sky or a thought, because we too are linked to the entire universe.”
“What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter – a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.”
“When you're out of willpower, you can call on stubbornness.”
“Whether we want to or not, we belong to our time and we share in its opinions, its feelings, even its delusions.”
“Whoever wishes to devote himself to painting should begin by cutting out his own tongue”
“With color one obtains an energy that seems to stem from witchcraft.”
“Work cures everything.”
“You must forget all your theories, all your ideas before the subject. What part of these is really your own will be expressed in your expression of the emotion awakened in you by the subject.”
“You study, you learn, but you guard the original naïveté. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover.”
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“In short, Beauty is everywhere. It is not that she is lacking to our eye, but our eyes which fail to perceive her. Beauty is character and expression. Well, there is nothing in nature which has more character than the human body. In its strength and its grace it evokes the most varied images. One moment it resembles a flower: the bending torso is the stalk; the breasts, the head, and the splendor of the hair answer to the blossoming of the corolla. The next moment it recalls the pliant creeper, or the proud and upright sapling.”
