Willem de Kooning Quotes About Art

Quotes about: Art

• I don't paint to live, I live to paint.

  Willem de Kooning

  Art, Passion, Paint

• The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves.

  Willem de Kooning

  Art, Attitude, Thinking

  Willem De Kooning, John Elderfield, Lauren Mahony (2011). “De Kooning: A Retrospective”, p.192, The Museum of Modern Art

• Whatever an artist's personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical. He acts from or upon other artists.

  Willem de Kooning

  Art, Feelings, Historical

  Willem De Kooning, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (1969). “Willem de Kooning”

• Spiritually I am wherever my spirit allows me to be, and that is not necessarily in the future... Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure.

  Willem de Kooning

  Art, Peaceful, Spirit

  Willem De Kooning (1979). “Willem de Kooning: Pittsburgh International Series, October 26, 1979-January 6, 1980, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute”

• An artist is forced by others to paint out of his own free will.

  Willem de Kooning

  Art, Artist, Free Will

  Willem De Kooning, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (1969). “Willem de Kooning”

• In art one idea is as good as another.

  Willem de Kooning

  Art, Ideas, Trembling

  Willem De Kooning, John Elderfield, Lauren Mahony (2011). “De Kooning: A Retrospective”, p.14, The Museum of Modern Art

• I make pictures and someone comes in and calls it art.

  Willem de Kooning

  Art

• Once, after finishing a picture, I thought I would stop for awhile, take a trip, do things-the next time I thought of this, I found five years had gone by.

  Willem de Kooning

  Art, Years, Finishing

  Willem De Kooning, Gagosian Gallery (2004). “De Kooning: a centennial exhibition”

• Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure. I always seem to be wrapped in the melodrama of vulgarity. I do not think... of art as a situation of comfort.

  Willem de Kooning

  Art, Thinking, Peaceful

  Willem De Kooning (1979). “Willem de Kooning: Pittsburgh International Series, October 26, 1979-January 6, 1980, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute”

• Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure.

  Willem de Kooning

  Love, Art, Peace

  Willem De Kooning, John Elderfield, Lauren Mahony (2011). “De Kooning: A Retrospective”, p.26, The Museum of Modern Art

• Art should not have to be a certain way.

  Willem de Kooning

  Art, Way, Should

• In art, one idea is as good as another. If one takes the idea of trembling, for instance, all of a sudden most art starts to tremble. Michelangelo starts to tremble. El Greco starts to tremble. All the Impressionists start to tremble.

  Willem de Kooning

  Art, Ideas, Trembling

  Willem De Kooning, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (1969). “Willem de Kooning”

• An artist is someone who makes art... He didn't invent it.

  Willem de Kooning

  Art, Artist

• Maybe in that earlier phase I was painting the woman in me. Art isn't a wholly masculine occupation, you know.

  Willem de Kooning

  Art, Phases, Occupation

  Willem De Kooning, Gagosian Gallery (2004). “De Kooning: a centennial exhibition”

• The word 'abstract' comes from the light tower of the philosophers. One of their spotlights that they have particularly focused on 'Art'. [Abstraction was] not so much what you could paint but rather what you could not paint. You could not paint a house or a tree or a mountain. It was then that subject matter came into existence as something you ought not have.

  Willem de Kooning

  Art, Light, House

  "Abstract Expressionist Painting in America". Book by William C. Seitz, p. 104, 1983.

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