Robert Henri Quotes - Page 7

Colors are beautiful when they are significant.

I can think of no greater happiness than to be clear-sighted and know the miracle when it happens. And I can think of no more real life than the adventurous one of living and liking and exclaiming the things of one's own time.

The good thing about painting from memory is that so much is forgotten.

Each man must take the material that he finds at hand, see that in it there are the big truths of life, the fundamentally big forces, and then express in his art whatever is the cause of his pleasure.

Renoir had not only a great interest in human character, in human feeling, but had also a great love for the people he painted.

Many receive a criticism and think it is fine; think they got their money's worth; think well of the teacher for it, and then go on with their work just the same as before. That is the reason much of the wisdom of Plato is still locked up in the pages of Plato.

Art appreciation, like love, cannot be done by proxy: It is a very personal affair and is necessary to each individual.

The world will see many fashions of art and most of the world will follow the fashions and make none. These cults - these 'movements' - are absolutely necessary, or at any rate their causes are, for somewhere in their centres are the ones who bear the Idea, the ones who have questioned, 'But what do I think?' and 'How shall I say it best?

All outward success, when it has value, is but the inevitable result of an inward success of full living, full play and enjoyment of one's faculties.

The pictures which do not represent an intense interest cannot expect to create an intense interest.

After all, the goal is not making art. It is living a life. Those who live their lives will leave the stuff that is really art.

Many things that come into the world are not looked into. The individual says 'My crowd doesn't run that way.' I say, don't run with crowds.

Students work in schools making life studies for years, win prizes for life studies and find in the end that they know practically nothing of the human figure. They have acquired the ability to copy.

Pretend you are dancing or singing a picture.

The real artist's work is a surprise to himself.

Concentrate on a single feature - as, build all toward one eye - make all lines lead toward that eye.

Fight with yourself when you paint, not with the model. A student is one who struggles with himself for order.

All education must be self-education.

Reality is obtained not by imitation, but by producing the sense of nature.

Finished persons are very common - people who are closed up, quite satisfied that there is little more to learn

Perhaps whatever there is in my work that may be really interesting to others and surely what is interesting to me, is the result of a sometimes successful effort to free myself from any idea that what I produce must be art.