The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?
Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.
It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.
Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.
Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.
Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.
The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.
Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.
You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea.
If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes.
We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given to us to understand.
Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs.
The chief enemy of creativity is "good" sense.
As an artist, all I need is my paints and brushes - and someone to drag me away when the canvas is done
There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.
We don't grow older, we grow riper
Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.
God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat. He has no real style. He just keeps on trying other things.
Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.
Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.
Are we to paint what's on the face, what's inside the face, or what's behind it?
Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot; others transform a yellow spot into the sun.
Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter?
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.
If I spit, they will take my spit and frame it as great art.
When you come right down to it all you have is yourself. The sun is a thousand rays in your belly. All the rest is nothing.
Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.
I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.
It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child
Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? no. Just as one can never learn how to paint.
I do not seek. I find.
Everyone wants to understand painting. Why is there no attempt to understand the song of the birds?
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
Often while reading a book one feels that the author would have preferred to paint rather than write; one can sense the pleasure he derives from describing a landscape or a person, as if he were painting what he is saying, because deep in his heart he would have preferred to use brushes and colors.
Everything you can imagine is real.
The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.
Everything is a miracle. It is a miracle that one does not dissolve in one's bath like a lump of sugar.
I don't own any of my own paintings because a Picasso original costs several thousand dollars -- it's a luxury I can't afford.
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