29 quotes
A time will come when people will think I am a myth, or rather something the newspapers have made up.
The Writings of a Savage (1996)
I have lingered among the nymphs of Corot, dancing in the sacred wood of Ville-d'Avray.
A young man who is unable to commit a folly is already an old man.
The Writings of a Savage (1996)
With this painting, I tried to make everything breathe faith, quiet suffering, religious and primitive style and great nature with its scream.
It takes very little to bring about a woman’s fall, but you have to lift a whole world in order to lift her.
Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge — and has to content oneself with dreaming.
Nature has mysterious infinities and imaginative power. It is always varying the productions it offers to us. The artist himself is one of nature's means.
The Writings of a Savage (1996)
Don't copy nature too closely. Art is an abstraction; as you dream amide nature, extrapolate art from it and concentrate on what you will create as a result.
The Writings of a Savage (1996)
In art, there are only two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists. And in the end, doesn't the revolutionary's work become official, once the State takes it over?
The Writings of a Savage (1996)
In order to produce something new, you have to return to the original source, to the childhood of mankind.
The Writings of a Savage (1996)
..color being enigmatic in itself.. ..then to be logical we cannot use it any other way than enigmatically..
The Writings of a Savage (1996)
I do not paint by copying nature. Everything I do springs from my wild imagination.
The Writings of a Savage (1996)
A great sentiment can be rendered immediately. Dream on it and look for the simplest form in which you can express it.
The Writings of a Savage (1996)
In Europe men and women have intercourse because they love each other. In the South Seas they love each other because they have had intercourse. Who is right?
Bengt Danielsson in Gauguin in the South Seas (1966)
I love Brittany; I find wildness and primitiveness there. When my wooden shoes ring on this granite, I hear the muffled, dull, and powerful tone which I try to achieve in painting.
The Writings of a Savage (1996)
My eyes close and uncomprehendingly see the dream in the infinite space that stretches away, elusive, before me.
The Writings of a Savage (1996)
Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge
Avant et Après (1903)
I must confess that I too am a woman and that I am always prepared to applaud a woman who is more daring than I, and is equal to a man in fighting for freedom of behavior.
The Writings of a Savage (1996)
At the age of ten, twenty, a hundred, very young, a little older, and very old, an artist is always an artist. Isn't he better at some times, some moments, than at others? Never impeccable, since he is a living, human being?
The Writings of a Savage (1996)
Copying nature — what is that supposed to mean? Follow the masters! But why should one follow them? The only reason they are masters is that they didn't follow anybody!
The Writings of a Savage (1996)