Edgar Degas Quotes - Page 2

Drawing is not the same as form, it is a way of seeing form.

Drawing is the artist's most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality.

Daylight is too easy. What I want is difficult - the atmosphere of lamps and moonlight.

It seems to me that today, if the artist wishes to be serious - to cut out a little original niche for himself, or at least preserve his own innocence of personality - he must once more sink himself in solitude. There is too much talk and gossip; pictures are apparently made, like stock-market prices, by competition of people eager for profit; in order to do anything at all we need (so to speak) the wit and ideas of our neighbors as much as the businessmen need the funds of others to win on the market. All this traffic sharpens our intelligence and falsifies our judgment.

You have to have a high conception, not of what you are doing, but of what you may do one day: without that, there's no point in working.

Hitherto the nude has always been represented in poses which presuppose an audience. But my women are simple, honest creatures who are concerned with nothing beyond their physical occupations... it is as if you were looking through a keyhole.

Art' is the same word as 'artifice,' that is to say, something deceitful. It must succeed in giving the impression of nature by false means.

He once said that he wished to be famous, but unknown.

I feel as a horse must feel when the beautiful cup is given to the jockey.

What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming.

What use is my mind? Granted that it enables me to hail a bus and to pay my fare. But once I am inside my studio, what use is my mind? I have my model, my pencil, my paints. My mind doesn't interest me.

If I could have had my own way, I would have confined myself to black and white.

One does not marry art. One ravishes it.

Make a drawing. Start it all over again, trace it. Start it and trace it again.

The frame is the reward of the artist.

For those who don't know what they are doing, painting is easy. For those who do know what they are doing, painting is difficult.

It seems to me that today if the artist wishes to be serious... he must once more sink himself in solitude.

A man is an artist only at certain moments, by an effort of will. Objects have the same appearance for everybody.

Great patience is called for on the hard path that I have entered on.

A picture is first of all a product of the artist's imagination, it must never be a copy.

Only two of my personalities are schizophrenic, but one of them is paranoid and the other one is out to get him. Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.

There is no such thing as Intelligence; one has intelligence of this or that. One must have intelligence only for what one is doing.

Taste! It doesn't exist. An artist makes beautiful things without being aware of it.

It requires courage to make a frontal attack on nature through the broad planes and the large lines and it is cowardly to do it by the facets and details. It is a battle.

Art critic! Is that a profession? When I think we are stupid enough, we painters, to solicit those people's compliments and to put ourselves into their hands! What shame! Should we even accept that they talk about our work?