Everything that is visible hides something that is invisible.
The purpose of art is mystery.
Each thing we see hides something else we want to see.
Too often we tend to reduce what is strange to what is familiar. I intend to restore the familiar to the strange.
The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meaning is unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown.
To be a surrealist means barring from your mind all remembrance of what you have seen, and being always on the lookout for what has never been.
Nothing is confused except the mind.
People who look for symbolic meaning fail to grasp the inherent poetry and mystery of the images.
Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist.
Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.
If the dream is a translation of waking life, waking life is also a translation of the dream.
If one looks at a thing with the intention of trying to discover what it means, one ends up no longer seeing the thing itself, but of thinking of the question that is raised.
A truly poetic canvas is an awakened dream.
We must not fear daylight just because it almost always illuminates a miserable world.
My painting is visible images which conceal nothing... they evoke mystery and indeed when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question 'What does that mean'? It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable.
The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it's just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture “This is a pipe”, I'd have been lying!
A thing which is present can be invisible, hidden by what it shows
The feeling we experience while we look at a picture is not to be distinguished from the picture or from ourselves. the feeling, picture, and ourselves are united in one mystery.
Life obliges me to do something, so I paint.
We are surrounded by curtains. We only perceive the world behind a curtain of semblance. At the same time, an object needs to be covered in order to be recognized at all.
An object never serves the same function as its image - or its name.
I think we are responsible for the universe, but that doesn't mean we decide anything.
Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see, but it is impossible. Humans hide their secrets too well.
I like subversive humor, freckles, women's knees and long hair, the laughter of playing children, and a girl running down the street.
Do not accept any explanation of the world either through chance or determinism. You are not responsible for your belief. It is not even you who decides that you are not responsible - and so on to infinity. You are not obliged to believe. There is no point of departure.
