Gauguin Quotes

Civilization is what makes you sick. ~ Paul Gauguin

Silence! I am learning to know the silence of a Tahitian night. ~ Paul Gauguin

Without delay I began work, without hesitation and all of a fever. ~ Paul Gauguin

How do you see this tree? Is it green?
... Don't be afraid to paint it as green as possible. ~ Paul Gauguin

Go on working, freely and furiously, and you will make progress. ~ Paul Gauguin

Do not copy nature. Art is an abstraction. Rather, bring your art forth by dreaming in front of her and think more of creation. ~ Paul Gauguin

Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise, what would become of beauty? ~ Paul Gauguin

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

Machines have come, art has fled, and I am far from thinking photography can help us. ~ Paul Gauguin

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

Cooking is an art and patience a virtue... Careful shopping, fresh
ingredients and an unhurried approach are nearly all you need. There is one more thing - love. Love for food and love for those you invite to your table. With a combination of these things you can be an artist - not perhaps in the representational style of a Dutch master, but rather more like Gauguin, the naïve, or Van Gogh,
the impressionist. Plates or pictures of sunshine taste of happiness and love. ~ Keith Floyd

31. "Shut your eyes in order to see." ~ ~ Paul Gauguin

Literary poetry in a painter is something special, and is neither illustration nor the translation of writing by form. ~ Paul Gauguin

Solitude is not to be recommended to everyone, for you have to be strong in order to bear it and act alone. ~ Paul Gauguin

In order to produce something new, you have to return to the original source, to the childhood of mankind. ~ Paul Gauguin

Why did I hesitate to put all this glory of the sun on my canvas? ~ Paul Gauguin

Sooner or later people will learn to recognize your worth ~ Paul Gauguin

Civilization is paralysis. ~ Paul Gauguin

Where do we come from?" "What are we?""Where are we going? ~ Paul Gauguin

It was so simple to paint things as I saw them; to put without special calculation a red close to a blue. ~ Paul Gauguin

The day may come when, contemplating a world given back to the primeval forst, a human survivor will have no means of even guessing how much intelligence Man once imposed upon the forms of the earth, when he set up the stones of Florence in the billowing expanse of the Tuscan olive-groves. No trace will be left then of the palaces that saw Michelangelo pass by, nursing his grievances against Raphael; and nothing of the little Paris cafes where Renoir once sat beside Cezanne, Van Gogh beside Gauguin. Solitude, vicegerent of Eternity, vanquishes men's dreams no less than armies, and men have known this ever since they came into being and realized that they must die. ~ Andre Malraux

We dressed ourselves up as Gauguin pictures and careered round Crosby Hall. Mrs. Whitehead was scandalized. She said that Vanessa and I were practically naked. My mother's ghost was invoked once more ... to deplore the fact that I had taken a house in Brunswick Square and had asked young men to share it ... Stories began to circulate about parties at which we all undressed in public. Logan Pearsall Smith told Ethel Sands that he knew for a fact that Maynard had copulated with Vanessa on a sofa in the middle of the drawing room. It was a heartless, immoral, cynical society it was said; we were abandoned women and our friends were the most worthless of young men. ~ Virginia Woolf

I taught myself how to draw, and I soon found out it was what I really wanted to do. I didn't think I was going to create any great masterpieces like Rembrandt or Gauguin. I thought comics was a common form of art, and strictly American in my estimation, because America was the home of the common man - and show me the common man that can't do a comic. So comics is an American form of art that anyone can do with a pencil and paper. ~ Jack Kirby

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

If you see a tree as blue, then make it blue. ~ Paul Gauguin

In painting one must search rather for suggestion than for description, as is done in music. ~ Paul Gauguin

What still concerns me the most is: am I on the right track, am I making progress, am I making mistakes in art? ~ Paul Gauguin

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! ~ Paul Gauguin

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

The landscape with its violent, pure colours dazzled and blinded me. I was always uncertain ... ~ Paul Gauguin

Beware of luxury! Beware of acquiring the taste and need for it, under the pretext of providing for the morrow ... ~ Paul Gauguin

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

The great radio telescopes of the world are constructed in remote locations for the same reason Paul Gauguin sailed to Tahiti: For them to work well they must be far from civilization. ~ Carl Sagan

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

Do what you like, so long as it is intelligent. ~ Paul Gauguin

A young man who is unable to commit a folly is already an old man. ~ Paul Gauguin

Don't over finish your work. There is value to done. ~ Paul Gauguin

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

When you see a Gauguin, you think, This man is living in a dream world. When you see a van Gogh, you think, This dream world is living in a man. ~ Adam Gopnik

Paul Gauguin asked, "whence do we come? What are we? Where are we going?" Well, I don't know about anyone else, but I came from my room, I'm a kid with big plans, and I'm going outside! See ya later! Say, who the heck is Paul Gauguin anyway? ~ Bill Watterson

The work of a man is the explanation of the man. ~ Paul Gauguin

There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite. ~ Paul Gauguin

The public wants to understand and learn in a single day, a single minute, what the artist has spent years learning. ~ Paul Gauguin

Absinthe is the only decent drink that suits an artist. ~ Paul Gauguin

In art, all who have done something other than their predecessors have merited the epithet of revolutionary; and it is they alone who are masters. ~ Paul Gauguin

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

Gauguin says that when sailors have to move a heavy load or raise an anchor, they all sing together to keep them up and give them vim. That's just what artists lack! ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Art is either revolution or plagiarism ~ Paul Gauguin

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! ~ Paul Gauguin

Happiness and work rose up together with the sun, radiant like it. ~ Paul Gauguin

There are noble tones, ordinary ones, tranquil harmonies, consoling ones, others which excite by their vigour. ~ Paul Gauguin

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

A nude by Degas is chaste. But his women wash in tubs! ... ~ Paul Gauguin

The flat sound of my wooden clogs on the cobblestones, deep, hollow and powerful, is the note I seek in my painting. ~ Paul Gauguin

Art is either a plagiarist or a revolutionist. ~ Paul Gauguin

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

It is well for young men to have a model, but let them draw the curtain over it while they are painting. ~ Paul Gauguin

How to re-light the fire the very ashes of which are scattered? ~ Paul Gauguin

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? ~ Paul Gauguin

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

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 ... ~ Paul Gauguin

A great sentiment can be rendered immediately. Dream on it and look for the simplest form in which you can express it. ~ Paul Gauguin

Beautiful colors exist, though we do not realize it, and are glimpsed behind the veil that modesty has drawn over them. ~ Paul Gauguin

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

Gauguin was a stockbroker in Paris, married, had five kids. One day he came home from work and told his wife he was leaving, that he was through supporting the family, that he had had enough. Just like that he fucking took off. He said he had always felt that he was a painter, so he moved to a rat-infested shithole and started painting. His wife begged him to come back, his bosses told him he was insane, he didn't care, he was following his heart. He left Paris, moved to Rouen, went from Rouen to Arles, from Arles to Tahiti. He was searching for peace, contentment, trying to fill that fucking hole he felt inside, and he believed he could fill it. He died in Tahiti, blind and crazy from syphilis, but he did it. He filled his fucking hole, made beautiful work, made beautiful, beautiful work... It takes a brave man to walk away, to care so much that he doesn't care about anything else, to be willing to obey what he feels inside, to be willing to suffer the consequences of living for himself. Every time I stand before his work it makes me cry, and I cry because I'm proud of him, and happy for him, and because I admire him. ~ James Frey

Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams. ~ Paul Gauguin

It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block. ~ Paul Gauguin

Do not copy nature too much. Art is an abstraction. ~ Paul Gauguin

The wrinkled man in the wheelchair with the legs wrapped, the girl with her face punctured deep with the teeth marks of a dog, the mess of the world, and I see - this, all this, is what the French call d'un beau affreux, what the Germans call hubsch-hasslich - the ugly-beautiful. That which is perceived as ugly transfigures into beautiful. What the postimpressionist painter Paul Gauguin expressed as 'Le laid peut etre beau' - The ugly can be beautiful. The dark can give birth to life; suffering can deliver grace. ~ Ann Voskamp

It is better to paint from memory, for thus your work will be your own ... ~ Paul Gauguin

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

I made a promise to keep a watch over myself, to remain master of myself, so that I might become a sure observer. ~ Paul Gauguin

There is no such thing as exaggerated art. I even believe that there is salvation only in extreme. ~ Paul Gauguin

A critic is someone who meddles with something that is none of his business. ~ Paul Gauguin

A time will come when people will think I am a myth, or rather something the newspapers have made up. ~ Paul Gauguin

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

We haven't got to the Sunflowers yet, said Michael.
No, we haven't, she said. You're right. OK, so Vincent hoped to set up an artists' studio down there in the South because he was keen to have friends and like-minded people around him.
I think he was probably lonely, said Michael. What with the ear thing and the darkness.
I think he was, too, said Dora. 1888 was the year, and he was waiting for another artist to join him, a man called Paul Gauguin. People say that, in all probability, he painted the Sunflowers as decoration for Gaugain'S room. Did lots of versions of them too, not just this. It's a lovely thought, though, isn't it? Some people say it's not true but I like to think it is. Painting flowers as a sign of friendship and welcome. Men and boys should be capable of beautiful things.
Never forget that, you two, she said, and she disappeared into the kitchen. ~ Sarah Winman

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

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. ~ Paul Gauguin

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? ~ Paul Gauguin

I reached out a hand, and touched her. Her body was hard, and slim, and lithe, and her breasts felt like breasts that Gauguin might have painted. Her mouth, in the darkness, was soft and warm against mine.
People come into your life for a reason. ~ Neil Gaiman

Today one can dare anything, and, furthermore, nobody is surprised. ~ Paul Gauguin

Letter from Van Gogh to Gauguin: Ah! my dear friend, to make of painting what the music of Berlioz and Wagner has been before us ... a consolatory art for distressed hearts! There are as yet only a few who feel it as you and I do!!! [Letter 739, Arles, 21 January 1889] ~ Liesbeth Heenk

Many excellent cooks are spoilt by going into the arts. ~ Paul Gauguin

When the physical organism breaks up, the soul survives. It then takes on another body. ~ Paul Gauguin

Life is merely a fraction of a second. An infinitely small amount of time to fulfill our desires, our dreams, our passions. ~ Paul Gauguin

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." ~ Paul Gauguin

I've never really understood the term 'Post-Impressionism' as more than a label for Cezanne, Gauguin and van Gogh. ~ Nigel Hamilton

We never really know what stupidity is until we have experimented on ourselves. ~ Paul Gauguin