Henri Matisse Quotes - Page 6

Much of the beauty that arises in art comes from the struggle an artist wages with his limited medium.

What I dream of is an art of balance.

A rapid rendering of a landscape represents only one moment of its existence. I prefer, by insisting upon its essential character, to risk losing charm in order to gain greater stability.

A young painter who cannot liberate himself from the influence of past generations is digging his own grave.

...I am driven on by an idea that I really only grasp as it grows with the picture.

I am curious about color as one would be visiting a new country, because I have never concentrated so closely on color expression. Up to now I have waited at the gates of the temple.

For my part I have never avoided the influence of others. I would have considered it cowardice and a lack of sincerity toward myself.

I have always sought to be understood and, while I was taken to task by critics or colleagues, I thought they were right, assuming I had not been clear enough to be understood. This assumption allowed me to work my whole life without hatred and even without bitterness toward criticism, regardless of its source. I counted solely on the clarity of expression of my work to gain my ends. Hatred, rancor, and the spirit of vengeance are useless baggage to the artist. His road is difficult enough for him to cleanse his soul of everything which could make it more so.

Photographs will always be impressive because they show us nature, and all artists will find in them a world of sensations. The photographer must therefore intervene as little as possible, so as not to cause photography to lose the objective charm which it naturally possesses, notwithstanding its defects.

What interests me most is neither still life nor landscape, but the human figure.

My models, my human figures, are never like extras in an interior. They are the main theme of my work. I depend absolutely on my model.

It is only after years of preparation that the young artist should touch color - not color used descriptively, that is, but as a means of personal expression.

What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter - a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.

Precision is not reality

In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer understands what one is doing or what one knows, and when there remains an energy that is all the stronger for being constrained, controlled and compressed.

The importance of an artist is to be measured by the quantity of new signs which he has introduced to the language of art.

I counted solely on the clarity of expression of my work to gain my ends.

Color helps to express light, not the physical phenomenon, but the only light that really exists, that in the artist's brain.

I do not repudiate any of my paintings but there isn't one of them that I would not redo differently, if I had it to redo. My destination is always the same but I work out a different route to get there.

Creation is the artist's true function; where there is no creation there is no art.

I was very embarrassed when my canvases began to fetch high prices. I saw myself condemned to a future of nothing but Masterpieces.

I am unable to make any distinction between the feeling I get from life and the way I translate that feeling into painting.

Cutting straight into color reminds me of the direct carving of the sculptor.

I have to create an object which resembles the tree. The sign for a tree, and not the sign that other artists may have found for the tree.

The wall around the window does not create two worlds.