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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

Yes, perhaps there is some enjoyment in it [his paintings] too, somewhere.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

Painting is an eye, a blinded eye that continues to see, and sees what blinds it.. ..this tiny little thing, which is nothing, which dominates life.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

Because it's an adventure out of all proportion. You have to devote all your strength to it and it's never enough.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970)

The world of architecture – and of works conceived for architecture – tends towards beauty. True beauty tends towards ugliness and panic.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970)

Mondrian? His mind was too subtle. He worked in the light. I work in the darkness.. .Mondrian is the Buddha of painting. I saw him once. You wondered how a man could radiate such charisma.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

When you get to the bottom, you discover that there is no room for pride. That’s what I paint.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

The most difficult thing is when you can’t do anything. When you just have to wait.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

At is taking risks.. ..a sincere attempt to achieve the impossible, the unknown.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

I feel myself tied to life. To the immensity and complexity of life. Each painting is an impulse towards life.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970)

Painting is an aid to vision. It turns life, the complexity of life, into something visible. It reveals things that we don’t know how to see.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

It is important to see that my paintings are ultimately stimulating. They are not at all the kind of thing that inspires despair.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970)

Mondrian.. .The constructivists?.. .They had certainties. They wanted a stable basis to work on, but I’m afraid that that was enormous arrogance on their part. Nothing is stable and no certainties are possible.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970)

Van Gogh.. .In this world of petty calculations, he was too intense. He frightened people. They cast him out.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970)

Painting is being alive. Through my painting, I beat back this world that stops us living and where we are in constant danger of being destroyed.. .No, you have to know when to keep silent.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

The real horror is mass production. Painting when there is no compulsion to do so… …Pictures like that are all unpunished crimes.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970)

A painting is not a battle against other people, but against oneself.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970)

I can't say or explain anything. Pictures don’t come from your head but from life.. .I am always looking for life. All that escapes thought or will-power.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

Everything has to end before it can begin.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1965)

What the eye can see won't get us very far. And what it can see is so limited, so restricted. But a gouache or an oil painting can be seen at a glance, can take in a whole world at a single glance.

Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (1970)

I'm trying to see, when everything in this world conspires to prevent us from seeing.

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.