Paul Gauguin Famous Quotes
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What still concerns me the most is: am I on the right track, am I making progress, am I making mistakes in art?
Out in the sun, some painters are lined up. The first is copying nature, the second is copying the first, the third is copying the second ... You see the sequence.
Nail up some indecency in plain sight over your door; from that time forward you will be rid of all respectable people,the most insupportable folk God has created.
Whatever may happen the sun will rise tomorrow as it rose to-day, beneficent and serene.
Do you know what will soon be the ultimate in truth? - photography, once it begins to reproduce colors, and that won't be long in coming. And yet you want an intelligent man to sweat for months so as to give the illusion he can do something as well as an ingenious little machine can!
All the masters have those weak points that are called masterpieces; and besides, they do them as crowd pleasers
to prove that they have the know-how.
The flat sound of my wooden clogs on the cobblestones, deep, hollow and powerful, is the note I seek in my painting.
A young man who is unable to commit a folly is already an old man.
The missionary is no longer a man, a conscience. He is a corpse, in the hands of a confraternity, without family, without love, without any of the sentiments that are dear to us. Emasculated, in a sense, by his vow of chastity, he offers us the distressing spectacle of a man deformed and impotent or engaged in a stupid and useless struggle with the sacred needs of the flesh, a struggle which, seven times out of ten, leads him to sodomy, the gallows, or prison.
Thanks to our cinctures and corsets we have succeeded in making an artificial being out of woman. She is an anomaly, and Nature herself, obedient to the laws of heredity, aids us in complicating and enervating her. We carefully keep her in a state of nervous weakness and muscular inferiority, and in guarding her from fatigue, we take away from her possibilities of development. Thus modeled on a bizarre ideal of slenderness to which, strangely enough, we continue to adhere, our women have nothing in common with us, and this, perhaps, may not be without grave moral and social disadvantages.
Slyly, banteringly, but also overbearingly, the critic - the one who does not swallow anything whole, who waits until posterity has consecrated it before ... howling - is among those who howl their admiration the way they howl their insults: don't be afraid, don't tremble - the beast doesn't have any nails or teeth, or even brain: it is stuffed ...
How to re-light the fire the very ashes of which are scattered?
It is so small a thing, the life of a man, and yet there is time to do great things, fragments of a common task.
Do not copy nature. Art is an abstraction. Rather, bring your art forth by dreaming in front of her and think more of creation.
A critic is someone who meddles with something that is none of his business.
If instead of a figure you put the shadow only of a person, you have found an original starting point, that strangeness of which you have calculated.
The great artist is a formulation of the greatest intelligence: he is the recipient of sensations which are the most delicate and consequently the most invisible expressions of the brain.
The landscape with its violent, pure colours dazzled and blinded me. I was always uncertain ...
Beware of luxury! Beware of acquiring the taste and need for it, under the pretext of providing for the morrow ...
I am a great artist and I know it. It's because of what I am that I have endured so much suffering, so as to pursue my vocation, otherwise I would consider myself a rogue - which is what many people think I am, for that matter.
The single most powerful tool for winning a negotiation is the ability to get up and walk away from the table without a deal
Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams.
No one is good; no one is evil; everyone is both, in the same way and in different ways. …
It is so small a thing, the life of a man, and yet there is time to do great things, fragments of the common task.
But I owe something to Vincent, and that is, in the consciousness of having been useful to him, the confirmation of my own original ideas about painting. And also, at difficult moments, the remembrance that one finds others unhappier than oneself.
Look closely at the Japanese; they draw admirably and yet in them you will see life outdoors and in the sun without shadows ...
There is no such thing as exaggerated art. I even believe that there is salvation only in extreme.
The critics can say stupid things and we can enjoy them, if we have the legitimate feeling of superiority - the satisfaction of a duty accomplished.
Proficiency in art is a contract with your self and the empowerment of your self. Not all of us demand or even desire proficiency, but for those who do it's necessary to temper the influence of groups. And while some artists think history is bunk, the historical evidence is overwhelming: "In my isolation I grow stronger."
Civilization is what makes you sick.
I am leaving in order to have peace and quiet. To be rid of the influence of civilization. I only want to do simple, very simple art and to be able to do that, I have to immerse myself in virgin nature, see no one but savages, live their life, with no other thought in my mind but to render, the way a child would, the concepts formed in my brain and to do this with the aid of nothing but the primitive means of art, the only means that are good and true.
Literary poetry in a painter is something special, and is neither illustration nor the translation of writing by form.
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.
31. "Shut your eyes in order to see." ~
Moved by an unconsious sentiment born out of solitude and savagery - idle tales of a noughty child who sometimes reflects and who is always a lover of the beautiful - the beauty that is personal - the only beauty that is human.
There are noble tones, ordinary ones, tranquil harmonies, consoling ones, others which excite by their vigour.
A time will come when people will think I am a myth, or rather something the newspapers have made up.
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?
Stay firmly in your path and dare; be wild two hours a day!
Life is merely a fraction of a second. An infinitely small amount of time to fulfill our desires, our dreams, our passions.
Lacking many of the essential implements, it irritated me to be reduced to impotence in the face of artistic projects to which I had passionately given myself.
A hint - don't paint too much direct from nature. Art is an abstraction! study nature then brood on it and treasure the creation which will result, which is the only way to ascend towards God - to create like our Divine Master.
Do not copy nature too much. Art is an abstraction.
If you see a tree as blue, then make it blue.
Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.
Beautiful colors exist, though we do not realize it, and are glimpsed behind the veil that modesty has drawn over them.
Follow the masters! But why should one follow them? The only reason they are masters is that they didn't follow anybody!
In order to produce something new, you have to return to the original source, to the childhood of mankind.
Sometimes people accuse me of being incomprehensible only because they look for an explicative side to my pictures which is not there.
The cyclone ends. The sun returns; the lofty coconut trees lift up their plumes again; man does likewise. The great anguish is over; joy has returned; the sea smiles like a child.
Without delay I began work, without hesitation and all of a fever.
Silence! I am learning to know the silence of a Tahitian night.
Many people say that I don't know how to draw because I don't draw particular forms. When will they understand that execution, drawing and color (in other words, style) must be in harmony with the poem?
The work of a man is the explanation of the man.
I plunged eagerly and passionately into the wilderness, as if in the hope of thus penetrating into the very heart of this Nature, powerful and maternal, there to blend with her living elements.
A bit of advice, don't copy nature too closely. Art is an abstraction; as you dream amid nature, extrapolate art from it, and concentrate on what you will create as a result.
Civilization is paralysis.
When the physical organism breaks up, the soul survives. It then takes on another body.
We never really know what stupidity is until we have experimented on ourselves.
Today one can dare anything, and, furthermore, nobody is surprised.
Why did I hesitate to put all this glory of the sun on my canvas?
The public wants to understand and learn in a single day, a single minute, what the artist has spent years learning.
A nude by Degas is chaste. But his women wash in tubs! ...
Go on working, freely and furiously, and you will make progress.
Don't over finish your work. There is value to done.
Sooner or later people will learn to recognize your worth
You may dream freely when you listen to music as well as when you look at painting. When you read a book you are the slave of the author's mind.
Oh yes! He loved yellow, did good Vincent ... When the two of us were together in Arles, both of us insane, and constantly at war over beautiful colors, I adored red; where could I find a perfect vermilion?
Many excellent cooks are spoilt by going into the arts.
Perhaps I have no talent, but all vanity aside - I do not believe that anyone makes an artistic attempt, no matter how small, without having a little - or there are many fools.
Solitude is not to be recommended to everyone, for you have to be strong in order to bear it and act alone.
It is better to paint from memory, for thus your work will be your own ...
Soon I'll be old and I've done precious little in this world for lack of time. I am always afraid I'll become senile before I've finished what I've undertaken.
I have come to an unalterable decision - to go and live forever in Polynesia. Then I can end my days in peace and freedom, without thoughts of tomorrow and this eternal struggle against idiots.
Under the continual contact with the pebbles my feet have become hardened and used to the ground. My body, almost constantly nude, no longer suffers from the sun. Civilization is falling from me little by little. I am beginning to think simply, to feel only very little hatred for my neighbor - rather, to love him.
Oh mysterious world of all light, thou hast made a light shine within me, and I have grown in admiration of thy antique beauty, which is the immemorial youth of nature.
Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise, what would become of beauty?
In the art of literature there are two contending parties. Those who aim to tell stories that are more or less well thought out, and those who aim at beautiful language, beauty of form. This contest may last a very long time; each side has a fifty-fifty chance. Only the poet can rightfully demand that verse be beautiful and nothing but.
It was so simple to paint things as I saw them; to put without special calculation a red close to a blue.
Art is either a plagiarist or a revolutionist.
Wherever I go I need a period of incubation so that I may learn the essence of nature, which never wishes to be understood or yield herself.
Where do we come from?" "What are we?""Where are we going?
Absinthe is the only decent drink that suits an artist.
For Christ's sake, were the mountains blue, then chuck on some blue and don't go telling me that it was a blue a bit like this or like that, it was blue wasn't it? Good - make them blue and that's enough!
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.
In painting one must search rather for suggestion than for description, as is done in music.
If I did what has already been done, I would be a plagiarist and would consider myself unworthy; so I do something different and people call me a scoundrel. I'd rather be a scoundrel than a plagiarist!
I was aware that on my skill as a painter would depend the physical and moral possession of the model ...
There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite.
However depressed I may be I am not in the habit of giving up a project without having tried everything, even the 'impossible', to gain my end.
Machines have come, art has fled, and I am far from thinking photography can help us.
Do what you like, so long as it is intelligent.
The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.
Happiness and work rose up together with the sun, radiant like it.
A great sentiment can be rendered immediately. Dream on it and look for the simplest form in which you can express it.
My God! How terrible these money questions are for an artist!
One's state of mind is three-quarters of what counts, so it has to be carefully nurtured if you want to do something great and lasting.
Art is either revolution or plagiarism
In art one is concerned with the condition of the spirit for three quarters of the time; one must therefore care for oneself if he wishes to make something great and lasting.
I made a promise to keep a watch over myself, to remain master of myself, so that I might become a sure observer.
It is well for young men to have a model, but let them draw the curtain over it while they are painting.