Paul Gauguin Quotes - Page 3

In art, all who have done something other than their predecessors have merited the epithet of revolutionary; and it is they alone who are masters.

Many people say that I don't know how to draw because I don't draw particular forms. When will they understand that execution, drawing and color (in other words, style) must be in harmony with the poem?

In Europe men and women have intercourse because they love each other. In the South Seas they love each other because they have had intercourse. Who is right?

It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block.

One's state of mind is three-quarters of what counts, so it has to be carefully nurtured if you want to do something great and lasting.

I am a great artist and I know it. It's because of what I am that I have endured so much suffering, so as to pursue my vocation, otherwise I would consider myself a rogue - which is what many people think I am, for that matter.

There are two sorts of beauty; one is the result of instinct, the other of study. A combination of the two, with the resulting modifications, brings with it a very complicated richness, which the art critic ought to try to discover.

Painting is the most beautiful of all arts. In it, all sensations are condensed, at its aspect everyone may create romance at the will of his imagination, and at a glance have his soul invaded by the most profound memories, no efforts of memory, everything summed up in one moment. Complete art which sums up all the others and completes them.

Concentrate your strengths against your competitor's relative weaknesses.

In art, there are only two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists. And in the end, doesn't the revolutionary's work become official, once the State takes it over?

Thanks to our cinctures and corsets we have succeeded in making an artificial being out of woman. She is an anomaly, and Nature herself, obedient to the laws of heredity, aids us in complicating and enervating her. We carefully keep her in a state of nervous weakness and muscular inferiority, and in guarding her from fatigue, we take away from her possibilities of development. Thus modeled on a bizarre ideal of slenderness to which, strangely enough, we continue to adhere, our women have nothing in common with us, and this, perhaps, may not be without grave moral and social disadvantages.

Wherever I go I need a period of incubation so that I may learn the essence of nature, which never wishes to be understood or yield herself.

The flat sound of my wooden clogs on the cobblestones, deep, hollow and powerful, is the note I seek in my painting.

Under the continual contact with the pebbles my feet have become hardened and used to the ground. My body, almost constantly nude, no longer suffers from the sun. Civilization is falling from me little by little. I am beginning to think simply, to feel only very little hatred for my neighbor - rather, to love him.

I must confess that I too am a woman and that I am always prepared to applaud a woman who is more daring than I, and is equal to a man in fighting for freedom of behavior.

With practice the craft will come almost of itself, in spite of you and all the more easitly if you think of something besides technique.

Proficiency in art is a contract with your self and the empowerment of your self. Not all of us demand or even desire proficiency, but for those who do it's necessary to temper the influence of groups. And while some artists think history is bunk, the historical evidence is overwhelming: "In my isolation I grow stronger."

What still concerns me the most is: am I on the right track, am I making progress, am I making mistakes in art?

A critic is someone who meddles with something that is none of his business.

There are noble tones, ordinary ones, tranquil harmonies, consoling ones, others which excite by their vigour.

Today one can dare anything, and, furthermore, nobody is surprised.

Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one's will. Virtue, good, evil are nothing but words, unless one takes them apart in order to build something with them; they do not win their true meaning until one knows how to apply them.

Machines have come, art has fled, and I am far from thinking photography can help us.

I made a promise to keep a watch over myself, to remain master of myself, so that I might become a sure observer.

for Christ's sake, were the mountains blue, then chuck on some blue and don't go telling me that it was a blue a bit like this or like that, it was blue wasn't it? Good - make them blue and that's enough!