Quotes from Constantin Brancusi

There hasn't been any art yet. Art is just beginning.

Create like a god, command like a king, work like a slave.

When you see a fish you don't think of its scales, do you? You think of its speed, its floating, flashing body seen through the water... If I made fins and eyes and scales, I would arrest its movement, give a pattern or shape of reality. I want just the flash of its spirit.

Theories are patterns without value. What counts is action.

Whoever does not detach himself from the ego never attains the Absolute and never deciphers life.

They are imbeciles who call my work abstract. That which they call abstract is the most realistic, because what is real is not the exterior but the idea, the essence of things.

Nothing grows well in the shade of a big tree.

I refused [to study under Rodin] because nothing grows under large trees.

Nothing can grow under big trees.

Architecture is inhabited sculpture.

Things are not difficult to make; what is difficult is putting ourselves in the state of mind to make them.

Don't look for obscure formulas or mystery in my work. It is pure joy that I offer you. Look at my sculptures until you see them. Those closest to God have seen them.

The work of art expresses precisely those things which do not die. It must do so, however, in a form that bears witness to the artist's own era.

The function of art is to make that understood which in the form of argument would be incomprehensible.

To see far is one thing, going there is another.

...That which they call abstract is the most realistic, because what is real is not the exterior but the idea, the essence of things.

What is real is not the external form, but the essence of things... it is impossible for anyone to express anything essentially real by imitating its exterior surface.

Simplicity is not an objective in art, but one achieves simplicity despite one's self by entering into the real sense of things.

In art, one does not aim for simplicity; one achieves it unintentionally as one gets closer to the real meaning of things.

Why write [about my art]? Why not just show the photographs?

They are imbeciles who call my work abstract. That which they call abstract is the most realistic, because what is real is not the exterior but the idea, the essence of things.

Architecture is inhabited sculpture.

I ground matter to find the continuous line. And when I realized I could not find it, I stopped, as if an unseen someone had slapped my hands.

When you see a fish you don't think of its scales, do you? You think of its speed, its floating, flashing body seen through the water. Well, I've tried to express just that. If I made fins and eyes and scales, I would arrest its movement, give a pattern or shape of reality. I want just the flash of its spirits.