Bonnard Quotes

The principal subject is the surface, which has its color, its laws over and above those of object. ~ Pierre Bonnard

You reason colour more than you reason drawing Colour has a logic as severe as form. ~ Pierre Bonnard

Color does not add a pleasant quality to design - it reinforces it. ~ Pierre Bonnard

A painting that is well composed is half finished. ~ Pierre Bonnard

The desire to catch, as Bonnard hoped, the PASSING MOMENT is antithetical to being in the moment. The photographer is an observer to others' moments. The Picture People have dedicated themselves to this paradox, and consign themselves on either side of the equation. ~ Lynne Tillman

It was an unforgettable painting; it set a dense golden halo of light round the most trivial of moments, so that the moment, and all such moments, could never be completely trivial again. ~ John Fowles

What attracted me was less art itself than the artist's life and all that it meant for me: the idea of creativity and freedom of expression and action. I had been attracted to painting and drawing for a long time, but it was not an irresistible passion; what I wanted, at all costs, was to escape the monotony of life. ~ Pierre Bonnard

Speaking, when you have something to say, is like looking. But who looks? If people could see properly, and see whole, they would all be painters. And it's because people have no idea how to look that they hardly ever understand. ~ Pierre Bonnard

It's not a matter of painting life, it's a matter of giving life to painting. ~ Pierre Bonnard

I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan's new play or Le Balcon or Les Negres
of Genet, but I don't, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness ~ Frank O'Hara

I'm trying to do what I have never done - give the impression one has on entering a room: one sees everything and at the same time nothing. ~ Pierre Bonnard

How many days have I spent alone with my cat ... and when I say alone, I mean without a material being, for my cat is a mystical companion, a spirit. ~ Pierre Bonnard

Art will never be able to exist without nature. ~ Pierre Bonnard

The expression on my face - who on earth would be interested in that? All that I have to say is to be found in my works. (On being photographed) ~ Pierre Bonnard

Draw your pleasure, paint your pleasure, and express your pleasure strongly. ~ Pierre Bonnard

One does not always sing out of happiness. ~ Pierre Bonnard

The artist who paints the emotions creates an enclosed world ... the picture ... which, like a book, has the same interest no matter where it happens to be. Such an artist, we may imagine, spends a great deal of time doing nothing but looking, both around him and inside him. ~ Pierre Bonnard

It seemed to me that it was possible to translate light, forms, and character using nothing but color, without recourse to values. ~ Pierre Bonnard

Imagination is merely the exploitation of our memory. ~ Pierre Bonnard

After the great Impressionists, and again after Van Gogh and Gaugin, people said, 'Painting is now played out.' But Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Roussel and Vuillard appeared and gave them the lie. 'We were wrong,' said the croakers, 'but this at any rate is the end.' Yet to refute them, and to prove that there is no end to art, still another generation of painters sprang up. ~ Ambroise Vollard

Drawing is feeling. Color is an act of reason. ~ Pierre Bonnard

Work on the accent, it will enliven the whole. ~ Pierre Bonnard

I can think of numberless males, from Bonnard to Callahan, who have photographed their lovers and spouses, but I am having trouble finding parallel examples among my sister photographers. The act of looking appraisingly at a man, making eye contact on the street, asking to photograph him, studying his body, has always been a brazen venture for a woman, though, for a man, these acts are commonplace, even expected. ~ Sally Mann

Art is not nature ... There was a lot more to be got out of color. ~ Pierre Bonnard

When you forget everything, there only remains yourself - and that is not enough. ~ Pierre Bonnard

Love It, is to increase by forgetting. It's escape through a single being to mediocrity of all other. It's one more for trying to be less. It's become like everyone else in the belief that we become as a person. It is giving appointment to happiness in the palace of chance. ~ Abel Bonnard

The painter's only solid ground is the palette and colors, but as soon as the colors achieve an illusion, they are no longer judged. ~ Pierre Bonnard

One always talks of surrendering to nature. There is also such a thing as surrendering to the picture. ~ Pierre Bonnard

You cannot possibly invent painting all by yourself. ~ Pierre Bonnard