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Maurice Denis Quotes
1870–1943 France
Maurice Denis (25 November 1870 - 13 November 1943) was a French painter, decorative artist and writer, who was an important figure in the transitional period between Impressionism and modern art. Denis was associated with Les Nabis, then the French Symbolist movement with a return to neo-classicism.
Also known as: Denis, Maurice
Random Maurice Denis quote
15 quotes
Art is the sanctification of the nature, of that nature found in everyone who is content to live.
The sublime is to approach the subject or wall with an attitude that is grand, noble, and in no way petty..
The profoundness of our emotions comes from the sufficiency of these lines and these colors to explain themselves.. ..everything is contained in the beauty of the work.
Think of late paintings where Christ is the central figure.. .Remember the large mosaics of Rome. Reconcile the employment of large-scale decorative means and the direct emotions of nature.
Art is no longer a visual sensation that we gather, like a photograph, as it were, of nature. No, it is a creation of our spirit, for which nature is only the occasion.
Remember that a picture, before being a battle horse, a nude, an anecdote or whatnot, is essentially a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order.
Don't lose sight of the essential objectives of painting, which are expression, emotion, delectation; to understand the means, to paint decoratively, to exalt form and color.
Decorative and edifying. That is what I want art to be before anything else.
..Every work of art is a transposition,a caricature,the passionate equivalent of a sensation received.
I believe that art should sanctify nature.
Painting is first of all the art of imitation, and not the servant of some imaginary 'purity'
What amazement, followed by what a revelation! In place of windows opening on nature, like the impressionists, these were surfaces which were solidly decorative, powerfully colorful, bordered with brutal strokes, partitioned.
Art is no longer a purely visual experience.. ..it is a work of our intellect triggered by nature.. ..the imagination again become the queen of our strengths and we liberate our sensitivity.
..the classical aesthetic offers us at the same time a method of thinking and a method of wanting to be, a moral and at the same time a psychology.. .The classical tradition as a whole, by the logic of the effort and the greatness of results, is in some way parallel with the religious tradition of humanity.
To synthesize is not necessarily to simplify in the sense of suppressing certain parts of the object: it is to simplify in the sense of rendering intelligible. It is, in short, to put in hierarchic order: to set each picture to a single rhythm, to a dominant; it is sacrifice, to subordinate — to generalize.