40 quotes
It is the transcendent imagination working on this material that releases the mysterious energies which move and speak of deepest existence.
Art, if it is successful in the task of questioning reality, if it is good painting and not merely a performance of dexterity, will be an affirmation of God.
Italian Report (1955)
I believe when you bring, say, a plant into a room, everything in that room changes in relation to it. This tension — tension is the only word for it — can be painted.
The painter celebrates life where he finds it. His morality is the morality of enjoyment, of the continuous development of his own taste without shame or fear. It is a sort of heroism.
Each work of art is a complete entity existing in its own right and by its own particular logic.
Nano Reid (1950)
My paintings are merely signs that the activity was engaged in.
It is precisely what he does not know which may destroy him.
Its life depends on the degree to which it is inhabited by mystery, speaks to us of the unknown.
The development that produces great art is a moral and not an aesthetic development.
All art is probably erotic in its ultimate character, but painting more than anything else is a purely nervous erotic activity.
Metaphysics — what metaphysics do those trees have?
One who opens his eyes and sees. To be good at seeing. How difficult not to see anything but the visible. And nothing will be left but dust and manure. Attempting the impossible. Approach the mystery.
To paint even a bottle is dramatic. A leaf will do.
The head, the face, the lines and features, contain everything for the painter who understands well enough to put it down.
Nano Reid (1950)
But of course these pictures are not shocking; good painting never is.
Some Notes on Caravaggio (1956)
The ethics of art are terrifying because real art by increasing our knowledge of ourselves increases in exactly the same proportion the ethical commitment.
X magazine (1959)
You may know a good painter by his habit of work: a good painter works constantly.
The Artist Speaks (1951)
Everything written about art is profoundly unimportant.
The Artist Speaks (1951)
In the remote purity of his solitariness, where the work of art is made, the artist is supremely the anti-social creature.
X magazine (1959)
The Art of painting is itself an intensely personal activity.
X magazine (1959)