Quotes About Art

Millet nos legou a síntese do camponês e hoje, sim, temos Lhermitte, claro, há ainda alguns outros, Meunier... mas aprendemos hoje mais geralmente a ver os camponeses? Não, quase ninguém sabe produzir um.

Preferiria ganhar 150 francos por mês como pintor do que 1.500 francos por mês por outros meios, mesmo como negociante de quadros.

Estou bem estes dias, a não ser um certo fundo de vaga tristeza difícil de definir

Se algo em seu íntimo lhe disser "você não é pintor", é então que você deve pintar, meu velho, e também esta voz se calará, mas somente desta maneira;

exchanging pictures with other artists. In one word, with much energy, with a sincere personal feeling of colour in nature I would say an artist can get on here notwithstanding the many obstructions. And I intend remaining here still longer.

In Antwerp I did not even know what the impressionists were, now I have seen them and though not being one of the club yet I have much admired certain

Trade is slow here. The great dealers sell Millet, Delacroix, Corot, Daubigny, Dupré, a few other masters at exorbitant prices. They do little or nothing for young artists. The second class dealers contrariwise sell those at very low prices.

In short it is not as good as your painting yet; never mind, it will come; you must certainly continue your sonnets. There are so many people, especially among our comrades, who imagine that words are nothing - on the contrary, isn't it true that saying a thing well is as interesting and as difficult as painting it? There is the art of lanes and colours, but the art of words is there nonetheless, and will remain.

The more ugly, old, mean, ill, poor I get, the more I want to take my revenge by producing a brilliant colour, well arranged, resplendent. Jewellers too get old and ugly before they learn how to arrange precious stones properly. And arranging the colours in a painting in order to make them vibrate and to enhance their value by their contrasts is something like arranging jewels properly or designing costumes

Now and then when I am writing, I automatically do a small drawing, such as I sent you lately. I did one this morning representing Elijah in the desert under an orange sky, with some hawthorns in the foreground. It is nothing special, but I see it all so clearly before me, and I think that at such moments I could speak about it enthusiastically - may it be given me to do so later on.

Understand that the more clear-cut we are about this, the sooner they will come to you to see them. You yourself do not sell my work, so you are not doing business outside the firm of Boussod V. & Co. by showing it. So you will be acting quite correctly, which is always decent. However, should someone or other want to buy, very good, then they have only to apply directly to me. But be sure of this, if we can stand the siege, my time will come.

Goodbye, write again between times if you can. As to the money, do what you can, but remember that we must try our utmost to succeed. And I won't let that idea of painting portraits go, for it is a good thing to fight for, to show people that there is more in them than the photographer can possibly get out of them with his machine.

But always those same conventional eyes, noses, mouths - waxlike and smooth and cold. It cannot but always remain lifeless. And the painted portraits have a life of their own, coming straight from the painter's soul, which the machine cannot reach. The more one looks at photographs, the more one feels this, I think.

If you hear a voice within you say ,you cannot paint,' then by all means paint. And that voice will be silenced.

Thank you very much too for all the steps you have taken toward the exhibition of the Independents. On the whole I'm very glad that they've been put with the other impressionists.

Fortunately for me, I do not hanker after victory any more, and all that I seek in painting is a way to make life bearable.

If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint. And that voice will be silenced.

You have been lucky to meet Guy de Maupassant. I have just read his first book, Des Vers, poems dedicated to his master Flaubert; there is one, "Au bord de l'eau," which is already himself. What Van der Meer of Delft is to Rembrandt among the painters, he is to Zola among the French novelists.

But in the course of four months 250 fr. must be deducted for the payment of colours and rent; well, then my work is hampered and obstructed to such an extent that I am at my wit's end, and I prefer to tell the fellows: Sell the whole lot! But let me work!

It does one good to read things like that, more than most of the stuff the decadents write, with their passion for saying the most obvious things in the most wildly contorted phrases.

But I, for my part, am convinced that in this respect one can have faith in modern art. The fact that I have a definite belief about art makes me sure of what I want in my own work, and I shall try to reach it even at the risk of my own life.

So now, when anyone says that such and such is done too quickly, you can reply that they have looked at it too quickly.

There are certain times when it is far from clear to us that art should be something sacred or good.

Am vrut sa arat ca a muri... este un act la fel de simplu ca si caderea unei frunze... cateva maini de pamant intoarse si o cruce mica de lemn.