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Quotes from Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde — Bram van Velde

1895–1981 Netherlands

← All quotes by Bram van Velde

78 quotes

To be nothing. Just nothing. It’s a frightening experience. You have to let go of everything.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

I don't like talking. I don’t like people talking to me.. .Painting is silence.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

Yes, I abandoned everything. Painting required it. It was all or nothing.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

Each of my paintings is a cycle. It’s like existence, life. They are always in motion.. .If they were fixed and static, they would be false.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

The artist is living a secret that he has to make manifest

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

The important thing is to be nothing.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

The artist is the bearer of life.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

Life is so difficult to catch.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

Painting is so stupid, so simple. I paint to get out of the through. I paint my misery.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

I think there is a degree of primitivism in what I do.. .You have to see without illusions. Without trying to protect yourself.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970)

Something is trying to come into the world. But I don’t know what it is. I never start by knowing. It's impossible to know. Truth is not knowledge.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970)

I paint the impossibility of painting.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

The less you think, the better it is.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

In the first piece that you Beckett wrote about me [circa 1946], you never once used the word color. That was important. I was struck by it.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

Perhaps he [ Mondrian ] was too faithful to a single discovery. And perhaps that kind of painting was right for the period. But now peace and harmony are no longer possible. There is only anguish.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970)

I need to go towards the illogical. This world we live in destroys us. It is always governed by the same laws. You have to create images that don’t belong to it. That are totally different from those it presents us.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970)

The more you know, the less you are.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

A painter is somebody who sees. I paint the moment when I set out. When I set out to see. And it’s the same thing for the viewer. When he approaches the canvas, he is advancing towards an encounter. The encounter with vision.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Bram van Velde (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.