78 quotes
Painting, an oeuvre, is not such a big deal, it is so unimportant. But that’s precisely what makes it interesting.
Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970)
Most people's lives are governed by willpower. An artist is someone who has no will.
Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)
I start off on the canvas and, little by little, it imposes its own solution. But that solution is not easy to find.
Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970)
Creating a painting is a matter of ensuring that all its parts achieve unity. Though it's a precarious, fragile unity.
Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970)
A painter is someone who can't use words. His only escape is to be a seer.
Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)
I can’t say anything. There are no words.
Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)
When you are working, you are so far away and so absorbed, it's inevitable that you fall into a vacuum when you stop.. ..every time when I finish a painting, I always have to wait to get my strength back before I can begin another.
Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970)
I am powerless, helpless. Each time it’s a leap in the dark. A deliberate encounter with the unknown.
Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)
Each time it’s an attempt to get there. To get to see. To get where you can see.
Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)
An artist’s life is all very fine and moving. But only in retrospect. In books.
Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)
What makes a painting fascinating is its sincerity. Sincerity is such a rare thing. Most people don't dare to be sincere.
Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970)
They make you and you have no say in it. It’s Godot all the time. A chain around your neck and the whip cracking behind you.
Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)
Life is wrecked by living.
Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)
In this world that destroys me, the only thing that I can do is to live my weakness. That weakness is my only strength.
Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)
Everyone cheats. Only artists don’t. They don’t fool people and they aren’t fooled. They are outside all that. Nobody can understand them.
Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)
Van Gogh.. Fascinating. The fragility of that strong spirit.
Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)
However terrible it is, the thing never involves any sadness
Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970)
I don’t set out to speak a comprehensible language. But my language is authentic.
Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)
Painting doesn't interest me.. .What I paint is beyond painting.
Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)
I am in a thousand pieces. Painting somehow makes me whole.
Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970)