Paul Gauguin Quotes - Page 2

Do not copy nature too much. Art is an abstraction.

Nature has mysterious infinities and imaginative power. It is always varying the productions it offers to us. The artist himself is one of nature's means.

Whatever may happen the sun will rise tomorrow as it rose to-day, beneficent and serene.

Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise, what would become of beauty?

Oh yes! he loved yellow, this good Vincent, this painter from Holland - those glimmers of sunlight rekindled his soul, that abhorred the fog, that needed the warmth.

Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one's will.

I have tried to establish the right to dare everything.

The great artist is a formulation of the greatest intelligence: he is the recipient of sensations which are the most delicate and consequently the most invisible expressions of the brain.

I am entering into the truth, into nature.

The public wants to understand and learn in a single day, a single minute, what the artist has spent years learning.

In painting one must search rather for suggestion than for description, as is done in music.

By the combination of lines and colors, under the pretext of some motif taken from nature, I create symphonies and harmonies that represent nothing absolutely real in the ordinary sense of the word but are intended to give rise to thoughts as music does.

Civilization is paralysis.

Do not finish your work too much. An impression is not sufficiently durable for its first freshness to survive a belated search for infinite detail; in this way you let the lava grow cool.

How to re-light the fire the very ashes of which are scattered?

The work of a man is the explanation of the man.

Sooner or later people will learn to recognize your worth

Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.

The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.

And here in my isolation I can grow stronger. Poetry seems to come of itself, without effort, and I need only let myself dream a little while painting to suggest it.

A young man who is unable to commit a folly is already an old man.

Poor artist! You gave away part of your soul when you painted the picture which you are now trying to dispose of.

It is useless to advise solitude for everyone; one must be strong enough to endure it and to work alone.

I plunged eagerly and passionately into the wilderness, as if in the hope of thus penetrating into the very heart of this Nature, powerful and maternal, there to blend with her living elements.

Why work? The gods are there to lavish upon the faithful the good gifts of nature.