Pablo Picasso Quotes - Page 12

Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one's bath like a lump of sugar.

From the point of view of art, there are no concrete or abstract forms, but only forms which are more or less convincing lies.

Enough of Art. It's Art that kills us. People no longer want to do painting: they make art.

What I find horrible nowadays is that people are always trying to find a personality for themselves. Nobody bothers about what you might call a painter's ideal... the kind that's always existed... No. They couldn't care less about that.

Through art we express our conception of what nature is not.

For being a bad student I was banished to the 'calaboose' - a bare cell with whitewashed walls and a bench to sit on. I liked it there, because I took along a sketch pad and drew incessantly I could have stayed there forever drawing without stopping

Museums are just a lot of lies, and the people who make art their business are mostly imposters. We have infected the pictures in museums with all our stupidities, all our mistakes, all our poverty of spirit. We have turned them into petty and ridiculous things.

The only pictorial matter that is of interest to me is the matter and sentiments brought about by the work itself.

What is a face, really? Its own photo? Its make-up? Or is it a face as painted by such or such painter? That which is in front? Inside? Behind? And the rest? Doesn't everyone look at himself in his own particular way? Deformations simply do not exist.

People don't realize what they have when they own a picture by me. Each picture is a phial with my blood. That is what has gone into it.

Whatever the source of emotion that drives me to create, I want to give it a form which has some connection with the visible world, even if it is only to wage war on that world....I want my paintings to be able to defend themselves to resist the invader, just as though there were razor blades on all surfaces so no one could touch them without cutting his hands.

Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.

We must not discriminate between things. Where things are concerned there are no class distinctions. We must pick out what is good for us where we can find it.

Photography has arrived at the point where it is capable of liberating painting from all literature, from the anecdote, and even from the subject. In any case, a certain aspect of the subject now belongs to the domain of photography. So shouldn't painters profit from their newly acquired liberty, and make use of it to do other things?

I try to paint what I have found and not what I look for. In art, intentions are of little importance.

Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions.

But when I am alone, I do not have the effrontery to consider myself an artist at all, not in the grand old meaning of the word: Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt, Goya were great painters. I am only a public clown-a mountebank. I have understood my time and have exploited the imbecility, the vanity, the greed of my contemporaries. It is a bitter confession, this confession of mine, more painful than it may seem. But at least and at last it does have the merit of being honest.

An artist must be very careful not to look for models. As soon as one artist takes another as model, he is lost. There is no other point of departure than reality.

In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt.

Art isn't done to decorate apartments, but to wage war against the enemy.

One does a whole painting for one peach and people think just the opposite - that particular peach is but a detail.

If one knows exactly what is going to be done, why do it?

The essential in this time of moral poverty is to create enthusiasm.

When you are young and without success, you have only a few friends. Then, later on, when you are rich and famous, you still have a few... if you are lucky.

The secret of many of my deformations - which many people do not understand - is that there is an interaction, an intereffect between the lines in a painting: one line attracts the other and at the point of maximum attraction the lines curve in toward the attracting point and form is altered.