Top 9 Quotes by Elaine de Kooning

A painting to me is primarily a verb, not a noun, an event first and only secondarily an image.

A painting to me is primarily a verb, not a noun, an event first and only secondarily an image.

Events, Verbs, Nouns

"It is", No.4, Magazine for Abstract Art, Second Half Publishing Co., New York pp. 29, 30, Autumn, 1959.

For one thing, I want gesture-any kind of gesture, all kinds of gesture-gentle or brutal, joyous or tragic; the gesture of space soaring, sinking, streaming, whirling; the gestures of light flowing or spurting through color. I see everything as possessing or possessed by gesture. I've often thought of my paintings as having an axis around which everything revolves.

Elaine de Kooning

Color, Space, Light

Women can also be creative in total isolation. I know excellent women artists who do original work without any response to speak of. Maybe they are used to lack of feedback. Maybe they are tougher.

Elaine de Kooning

Artist, Creative, Isolation

I'm more interested in character. Character comes out of the work. Style is applied or imposed on it.

Elaine de Kooning

Character, Style

Elaine De Kooning, Everett McNear, Rose Slivka, Arts Club of Chicago (1983). “Elaine de Kooning”

Artists are like cockroaches; everything is grist for the mill.

Elaine de Kooning

Artist, Cockroaches, Mills

Every artist returns to things. The drawings that you make as a child or as an adolescent and the ideas that you have as a young beginning artist, no doubt they crop up again and again.

Elaine de Kooning

Children, Artist, Ideas

Inspiration is indispensable to my work, but it is hard to come by. It is there or it is not; it is a gift of the gods.

Elaine de Kooning

Inspiration, Indispensable, Hard

Art has been hijacked by nonartists. It's been taken over by bookkeeping. The whole thing is so corrupt. But I suppose that's okay. For artists, everything is grist for the mill. Artists are like cockroaches; we can't be stamped out.

Elaine de Kooning

Art, Taken, Cockroaches