L'ATELIER
ROBERT COANE
- ARTQUOTES -
ALWAYS ADDING...
...words of advice, encouragement, admonishion, pride
and precaution from
Masters, Critics, Dealers, Historians, Authors,
Collectors
on
Being
an Artist / Learning
& Teaching / Creativity / Drawing
/ Painting / Photography
Related Disciplines / Styles, Choices and Preferences
/ War and the Violence of Life / the
Model / the Figure
Sex and Morality / Esthetics /
Chance / the Studio and Work Ethic
/ Religion / the Business of Art
(Click
on category of interest)
|
rtists who are fond of reading invariably derive the greatest benefit from their studies ... Book learning encourages craftsmen to be inventive in their work; and certainly, whatever their natural gifts, their judgement will be faulty unless it is backed by sound learning and theory ... But everyone knows, too, that when he is at work the artist himself must decide after careful consideration what to reject and what to acaccept, using his own judgement and not relying on the theories of others, which are rarely of any value when divorced from practice. |
| When theory and practice coincide, then nothing could be more fruitful, since artistic skills are enhanced and perfected by learning and the advice and writings of knowledgeable artists carry more weight and are more efficacious than the words or work of those who are merely practical men." | |
| ~
Giorgio
Vasari |
|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|
| DINTENFASS |
COOKE |
MICHELANGELO |
VARGAS
LLOSA |
BACON |
CARAVAGGIO |
KRAMER |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
| LEONARDO |
HUGHES |
RIVERA |
KAHLO |
EISENSTEIN |
LANDIS |
FEIGEN |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
| CASANOVA |
WILDE |
MOTHERWELL |
TINTORETTO |
LEGROS |
BARYE |
KIMMELMAN |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
| CAPP |
SHAW |
WHISTLER |
HEPWORTH |
UNSWORTH |
JOBS |
PRIOROV |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
| VOGEL |
HUYSMANS |
DOSTOEVSKY |
PHILLIPS |
OPIE |
PLAZA |
GOETHE |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
| GAUGUIN |
CAVETT |
KLEIN |
ROTHKO |
REEVE |
RODIN |
SCHUMANN |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
| MIES VAN DER ROHE |
MATTHEWS |
DE
GONCOURT |
PETTINGER |
CISNEROS |
DAVIS
|
DE
GONCOURT |
| |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
| NOLDE
|
RIVERS |
SCHMIDT-ROTTLUFF |
EDWARDS |
BRESSON |
BECKMANN |
VAN
GOGH |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|
![]() |
![]() |
| DAVIES |
GIACOMETTI |
EAKINS |
VASARI |
MIRÓ |
GREENBERG |
GOMBRICH |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
| MATTISE |
KANDINSKY |
PICASSO |
ROBB |
GOLUB |
KRUGIER |
PEREZ-REVERTE |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
| BRETON |
KERTESZ |
SCHIFF |
ANGELOU |
KLEE |
BELL |
WOLFE |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
| MERKLE
RILEY |
FREUD |
VUILLARD |
MATTERA |
JOHNS |
CLARK |
DEGAS |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
| CLARK |
GOYA |
REINHARDT |
DUCHAMP |
POLLOCK |
BRAQUE |
CHEVALIER |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
| SAINT-GAUDENS |
ROBERTSON |
MURRAY |
SWEETMAN |
DE
KOONING |
MOSKOWITZ |
DENIS |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
| JAMES |
PORTER |
BLAKE |
PEARS |
MALLARMÉ |
DUGAN |
GAUDIER-BRZESKA |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
| EL
GRECO |
HODGKIN |
TURNER |
CAPOTE |
APOLLINAIRE |
DELACROIX |
ACHACOSO |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
| WRIGHT
|
QUEEN
MARIE |
NIN |
BLAKE |
COTTINGHAM |
COANE |
STRAND |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
| EINSTEIN
|
BOUCHER |
REMBRANDT |
WRIGHT |
TONEY |
LEE |
NIETZSCHE |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|
![]() |
|
![]() |
| HEPBURN |
MENCKEN |
GLUECK |
|
VASARI |
VAN
GOGH |
McNEIL |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
| DE
SADE |
BROOKS |
ELKINS |
RHEIMS
|
HERBERT |
MYATT |
MEIER-GRAEFE |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
| BELLOC |
FLAUBERT |
JOHNSON |
GRIMES
|
DE
MONTAIGNE |
CHILDS |
BONNARD |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
| WEBER |
SPINOZA |
DUNANT |
THOMSON
|
LEWIS |
ARMITAGE |
NICHOLSON |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
| FRANKLIN |
VALÉRY |
POINCARÉ |
DOWD
|
THURSTON |
WEIL |
BROAD |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
| SHAWN |
PIRSIG |
BULWER-LYTTON |
MAHER
|
HARDY |
DARROW |
BENJAMIN |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
| YEATS |
SMITH |
RIKLEEN |
AUSTEN
|
JUNG |
MOORE |
TWAIN |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
| BRODSKY |
ARISTOPHANES |
KLINKENBORG |
O'HAGAN
|
CHRISTOPHER |
ROUSSEAU |
EDITORIAL |
![]() |
| TBA |
TBA |
TBA |
BECKETT
|
TBA |
TBA |
TBA |
"There
are so many separations in every artist’s life — the projects
that live only in the mind,
the ones that go no further than a few sketches and, of course, the divorce
that takes place
when a work is really and truly finished and begins to live on its own.
For those of us who
celebrated
the life and work of Elizabeth Murray, who died of cancer on Sunday at
age 66,
we mourn our separation from both.
"Her paintings will be with us for years and years to come, teasing
us, resisting us, giving life to
something in her that could only find expression in an almost erotic sense
of color and shape.
People will come upon her work and wonder about the woman who made it,
and she will take
the place that every artist eventually takes — overshadowed by the
constructs of her imagination.
" But we — many of us New Yorkers — have been lucky to
have known the woman herself.
I have never met anyone in whom frankness and delicacy combined in the
way they did in Elizabeth.
Her eyes were very bold, and her face seemed constructed to make sure
you couldn’t miss that boldness.
There was a wildness blowing through her, and to talk to her was to feel
that she was consciously effacing,
for your benefit, something that would unhinge you if she let it out,
which she did in her work.
That was before cancer.
"And if you happened to see her in the past year, frail and bald
and as direct in the eye as ever,
you knew that there was no effacing the knowledge of death, or the fresh
understanding of life
that that knowledge gives.
"Elizabeth Murray’s death is enough to teach you how separate
and undisclosing an artist’s work always is.
And it remindsyou how imperfect the very idea of artistic expression is.
We know the work rises from within her,
but it doesn’t describe her
or capture her. Perhaps it’s best to say simply that it expresses
what she thought
it was possible to express with the toolsshe chose. It was central to
her idea of herself, and yet the reference
it makes to the living woman will now become more and more oblique. The
work will live on in the durable world.
But the memory of the artist lives on only in us, who are made of the
same impermanent stuff that she was."
-
Verlyn Klinkenborg on the Death of Elizabeth Murray, New York Times, 14
August 2007
• • •
"It's a disease -- being an artist. They cannot do anything other than what they are doing." - Terry Dintenfass
Thirty-three years later, he still works full time as a photographer. "Oh, I have to." he said, looking at me in surprise."
"I
have a compulsion to paint, or draw, or paste, or form, or combine, or twist,
or scratch, or scrape, stamp,
or glue or more, if I discover how.... I must work hard; though well into
my eighth decade, I am still a young painter
and feel the need to make up for all the years I spent doing other necessary
things." - Rebecca Rikleen
"Nobody makes you do it." - George McNeil
"The artist is a blessing unto others-a curse unto himself." - Carl Jung
"Art
is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument.
The artist is not a person endowed
with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize
its purpose through him." - Carl
Jung
"Few people know how to see, to see well, to see fully." - Pierre Bonnard
"In
whatever one does, there must be a relationship between the eye and the
heart. One must come to one's subject
in a pure spirit. One must be strict with oneself. There must be time for
contemplation, for reflection about the world
and the people about one." -
Henri Cartier Bresson
"Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life." - Goethe
"Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon." - Susan Ertz
"Fame
has also this great drawback, that if we pursue it, we must direct our lives
so as to please the fancy of men."
- Baruch
Spinoza
" None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not." - Baruch Spinoza
"A lover of solitude, he nevertheless surrounded himself with with admiring friends." - William Grimes
"Just
before his death, he [Michelangelo] burned a large number of his drawings,
sketches and cartoons
to prevent anyone from seeing the labours he endured ... for fear that he
might seem less than perfect." - Giorgio Vasari
"I am an artist. I am afflicted." - Tracy Lee
"Those
critics who, in modern times, have the most thoughtfully analyzed the laws
of aesthetic beauty, concur in maintain
that the real truthfulness of all works of imagination--sculpture, painting,
written fiction--is so purely in the imagination,
that the artist never seeks to represent the positive truth, but the idealized
image of a truth."
- Edward
George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton
“Even
when I enter into a room to pay a simple morning call I have unconsciously
the habit of regarding the scene as if
I were a spectre not solid enough to influence my environment.” -
Thomas Hardy
"I want to be an artist, that's all." - Eugene O'Neil
"Historically,
artists possess a critical and discerning intellect with the ability to
see through layers of illusion
to the underlying truth." - C. J. Collins
"It's wonderful to be famous as long as you remain unknown." - Edgar Degas
"I'm
not an actor. What does it mean, 'celebrity'?
I call myself an 'artisan'. Anyone with sensitivity is potentially an
artist. But then, you must have concentration besides sensitivity."
- Henri
Cartier-Bresson
"Painting
for me is a compulsive act. The only things that break its continuity are
other compelling necessities,
such as writing, housekeeping, meetings and teaching." - Anthony
Toney
"Some artists are destined to endure the hazards of ' interesting times' ." - Hilton Kramer
"Symptoms of the artistic temperament should be fought to the death." - David Graham Phillip
"Artists
are, above all, men who want to become inhuman."- Guillaume
Apollinaire
"[Art
is] an attempt to escape from life." - H.
L. Mencken
"Nor do I think that artists can necessarily be held to the standards of decorum of historians." - Diana Wright
"Well,
art makes an interesting life. Sometimes we paint; sometimes we don't. But
we never stop seeing the world
through artist eyes; never stop processing information through an artist
brain.." - Joanne Mattera
"I can't tell you if genius is hereditary, because heaven has granted me no offspring." - James McNeil Whistler
"Great art is always about human nature." - Michael Kimmelman
"Everything is autobiographical and everything is a portrait." - Lucian Freud
"Describe not the object itself but the effect it produces." - Stéphane Mallarmé
"Color has
taken hold of me. I don't have to try to capture it. It will posses me always.
That is the meaning of this happy hour. I know it. Color and I are one.
I am a painter." - Paul Klee
"The
painter should be solitary and consider what he sees and speak with himself,
choosing the most excellent parts of everything he sees. he should be as
a mirror and
change himself into as many colors as there are in the things that appear
in front of him.
In doing so he'll seem to himself a second nature." - Leonardo
"Do
not defend your [art]. This is your chance to sit back and to observe what
[viewers] make of your [work].
It is not the time to tell them that they have misunderstood it or to otherwise
try to defend it.
In the “real” world, you will not be able to follow your [art]
around and explain it or answer criticism.
If [viewers] do not understand what you have [done], you need to ask yourself
whether that is because
they are weak [viewers]... or whether it is because there is something in
your work that is confusing,
unclear or just plain mistaken. While you cannot really control [viewers],
you can make your [artwork] clearer,
easier to read and more persuasive without sacrificing integrity. In the
process, you will become a better [artist]."
- Michael Pettinger
"I
make little claim to being an artist in the romantic sense of that mauled
and blurred word.
I am a fine craftsman." - Robertson Davies
in What's Bred in the Bone
"The artist's world is limitless. it can be found anywhere, far from
where he lives or a few feet away.
It is always on his doorstep." - Paul Strand
"The
consummate artist conjures up the imageof a human being that will live on
in the richness of its
emotional texture when the sitter and his vanities have long been forgotten."
- E.H. Gombrich
"Los artistas son personas complicadas, no tienen que ser unos santos.
No hay que idealizarlos.
Importan sus obras, no sus vidas." - Mario Vargas Llosa
in Los cuadernos de Don Rigoberto
"One's mind is the world. Those who give expression to it are what
we call artists."
- J. D. Landis in Longing
"To create a work of art is to create the world." - Wassily Kandinsky
“I
want to go out and see if I can just forget about art and art history and
go out with a brush and try to do
some honest painting.” -
John Myatt
"Sometimes,
when I've been staring too hard, I've noticed that I could see the circumference
of my own eye."
- Lucian Freud
"Art is the expression of experiences and discoveries meaningful to humanity." - Anthony Toney
"So
may night continue to fall upon the orchestra, and may I, who am still searching
for something
in this world, may I be left with open or closed eyes, in broad daylight,
to my silent contemplation."
- Andre Breton
"My greatest obstacle has always been me." - Robert Coane
"I
refuse to adapt or integrate myself." - Imre Kertesz
"One cannot start a new life, you can only continue the old one."
- Imre Kertesz
"Blessed are the artists who, owing to family history, innate talent
and an indomitable will,
are born to their vocation. What a lot of false starts, wasted energy and
deferred achievement
they are spared!" - Hilton Kramer
"There are men whom nature has made small and insignificant but who
are so fiercely consumed
by emotionand ambition that they know no peace unless they are grappling
with difficult or
indeed almost impossible tasksand achieve astonishing results." - Giorgio
Vasari on Brunelleschi
"I
don't want to be interesting. I want to be good." - Ludwig Mies
Van Der Rohe
"Most artists
have one idea, or maybe two. In the best circumstances, that's enough for
a career."
- Michael Kimmelman
"There is service to art which goes beyond convenience." - Daniel C. Dugan
"If
I were certain that all my paintings would be burned, I think I'd go right
on painting
-- yes, I'd go right on painting..." - Georges
Braque
"So
now he occupies a niche, like most artists worth remembering, based on only
a few years' work
that nnevertheless still speaks to us."- Michael Kimmelman
"Millions of artists create; only a feware accepted or even discussed
by the public, and of those,
even fewer are consacrated by posterity." - Marcel
Duchamp
"Artists...are different from other people, they feel things more." - Barry Unsworth
"An artist at work is merely mad; an artist not at work is wholly mad." - J. D. Landis in Longing
"For
some artists, not working is just a less productive, more tormented form
of working." - Roberta Smith
"But Art, my dear Cornish, is a cruel obsession, as you may yet learn."
- Robertson Davies in What's Bred in the Bone
"[Art's] what exalted you, and {art's} what cast you down." -
J. D. Landis in Longing (Paraphrased)
"He
who is born with a talent for a talent finds in it his happiest exhistance."
- Goethe
"How do we know we are artists? ...All one can express at any moment
is himself...
What if I have merely suffered as an artist but, in the end, produced nothing
that might be called Art?"
- Robert Schumann
"He
is one of those curious cases of a coarse man capable of making the sweetest
art,
as if a hard outer shell were protection for a soft heart." - Michael
Kimmelman
"I
don't go along with the idea that every mark an artist makes is significant.
That would be arrogant."
- Howard Hodgkin
"His art seemed dangerous to man but entailed a vulnerable
openness on (Caravaggio's) part,
an exquisiteness of feeling that would've had some need of social armor
for going about the ordinary business of life."
- Peter Robb in 'M', The Man Who Became Caravaggio
"My honors
are misunderstanding, pesecution and neglect, enhanced because unsought."
- Thomas Eakins
"No man,
and least of all myself, could ever disentangle the feelings that animated
him."
- Thomas Eakins
"I
am a perfectly straightforward character with all my cards on the table.
But there are so many cards." - Picasso
"No question, Chardin was one of the greatest artists who ever picked
up a brush
- and all the greater for paintin without the attributes of greatness...
There was nothing extraordinary about his career
except the beauty of the works it produced." - Robert Hughes on
Jean-Siméon Chardin
"Anyone else will have all of my faults but none of my virtues."
- Picasso
"When I was a child, my mother said to me, 'If you become a soldier
you'll be a general.
If you become a monk, you'll end up as the Pope.'
Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso." - Picasso
"I
think art is an obsession with life and after all, as we are human beings,
our greatest obsession is with ourselves."
- Francis Bacon
"To be an artist at all is a form of vanity." - Francis Bacon
"Like
any monomaniac, Gauguin was in the Gauguin business, aggressively, competitively,
full time...
he labored to orchestrate his European reputation from several oceans away.
It was a demanding job.
It entailed not only creating art of extraordinary quality,
but also inventing a persona with which to promote it."- Holland
Cotter
"Generosity is a powerful spur to talent." - Giorgio Vasari
"An artist's time limits him." - Clifford Still
"Do
not define today. Define backward and forward, spatial and many sided.
A defined today is over and done with." - Paul Klee
"Most of
the Goyas we rightly regard asmasterpieces were not seen by the public in
the artist's lifetime."
- Robert Hughes
"In the true artist, Art and life were one." - J. D. Landis in Longing
"If you want to live as an artist - just live...just be." - Mikhail Priorov
"Rubens
was a happy man of action who was also a painter of genius.
Velázquez was a true professional." - Kenneth Clark
"Ars
longa, vita brevis." - Latin Proverb
"The past is of no importance. The present is of no importance.
It is with the future that we have to deal.
For the past is what man should not have been.
The present is what man ought not to be.
The future is what artists are." - Edmond De Goncourt
"Talent can have an expiration date." - Michael Kimmelman
"So
many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable,
and then, when we summon the will,
they soon become inevitable." - Christopher
Reeve
"So likewise in teaching others everything depends on consistency, for it is only through repetit