Colour Quotes - Page 21

• I don't want any colour to be noticeable... I don't want it to operate in the modernist sense as colour, something independent... Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid.

  Lucian Freud

  Independent, Emotional, Want

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• The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh. The effect that they make in space is as bound up with them as might be their colour or smell ... Therefore the painter must be as concerned with the air surrounding his subject as with the subject itself. It is through observation and perception of atmosphere that he can register the feeling that he wishes his painting to give out.

  Lucian Freud

  Air, Smell, Space

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• You reason colour more than you reason drawing Colour has a logic as severe as form.

  Pierre Bonnard

  Drawing, Logic, Reason

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• Colours in vibration, peeling like silver bells and clanging like bronze bells, proclaiming happiness, passion and love, soul, blood and death.

  Emil Nolde

  Passion, Blood, Silver Bells

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• If we seek for the simplest arrangement, which would enable it [the eye] to receive and discriminate the impressions of the different parts of the spectrum, we may suppose three distinct sensations only to be excited by the rays of the three principal pure colours, falling on any given point of the retina, the red, the green, and the violet; while the rays occupying the intermediate spaces are capable of producing mixed sensations, the yellow those which belong to the red and green, and the blue those which belong to the green and violet.

  Thomas Young

  Fall, Eye, Science

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• Bear in mind that the children of life are the children of joy; that the lower animals are only unhappy when made so by man; that man alone of all the creatures, has "found out many inventions", the chief of which appears to be the art of making himself miserable, and of seeing all Nature stained with that dark and hateful colour.

  William Henry Hudson

  Life, Art, Nature

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• I was walking along a road one evening – on one side lay the city, and below me was the fjord. The sun went down – the clouds were stained red, as if with blood. I felt as though the whole of nature was screaming – it seemed as though I could hear a scream. I painted that picture, painting the clouds like real blood. The colours screamed.

  Edvard Munch

  Real, Clouds, Blood

  Edvard Munch, Elvira Maluquer, Caja de Pensiones para la Vejez y de Ahorros. Centre Cultural (1986). “Much: catàleg de l'exposició 1863-1944 : 27 de gener-22 de març, 1987”

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• Black is not sad. Bright colours are what depress me. They're so... empty. Black is poetic. How do you imagine a poet? In a bright yellow jacket? Probably not.

  Ann Demeulemeester

  Fashion, Depressing, Color

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• I made my new album 'Colour Me Free!' in a week with my own money.

  Joss Stone

  Albums, Week, Made

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• Remember that a painting - before it is a battle horse, a nude model, or some anecdote - is essentially a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order.

  Maurice Denis

  Horse, Order, Battle

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• Work at the same time on sky, water, branches, ground, keeping everything going on an equal basis... Don't be afraid of putting on colour... Paint generously and unhesitatingly, for it is best not to lose the first impression.

  Camille Pissarro

  Sky, Water, First Impression

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• Simple colours can affect the intimate feelings with all the more force because they are simple.

  Henri Matisse

  Simple, Color, Rainbow

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• The very truth hath a colour from the disposition of the utterer.

  George Eliot

  Truth, Disposition

  George Eliot (2016). “Felix Holt ,The Radical”, p.469, George Eliot

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• The voice is certainly important and you can hear if it's beautiful or not, it's the gods who decide; it's more a question of what you do with the voice, which is the mysterious element. It's the personality behind the voice which makes the artist. The voice is a gift of God, but if you're not able to use this gift, what's left? Nothing but a beautiful voice, without nuance or color.

  Cecilia Bartoli

  Beautiful, Artist, Voice

  OperaNet Interview, www.culturekiosque.com.

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• Blue has no dimensions, it is beyond dimensions, whereas the other colours are not....All colours arouse specific associative ideas, psychologically material or tangible, while blue suggests at most the sea and sky, and they, after all, are in actual, visible nature what is most abstract.

  Yves Klein

  Art, Blue, Color

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• Comrade Blade Nzimande is complaining that EFF stole the ‘red colour’, he does not have a copyright on the ‘red colour’. There’s nothing we can steal from him because he has nothing but that skuurpot (pot scourer) face of his. Why didn’t he complain when Vodacom was red?

  Julius Malema

  Doe, Complaining, Red

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• The ideal reader of my novels is a lapsed Catholic and failed musician, short-sighted, colour-blind, auditorily biased, who has read the books that I have read.

  Anthony Burgess

  Book, Catholic, Musician

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• Black seems to make a colour cloudy, but darkness doesn't. A ruby could thus keep getting darker without ever becoming cloudy; but if it became blackish red, it would become cloudy.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Darkness, Black, Rubies

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• The prejudice many photographers have against colour photography comes from not thinking of colour as form. You can say things with colour that can't be said in black and white... Those who say that colour will eventually replace black and white are talking nonsense. The two do not compete with each other. They are different means to different ends.

  Edward Weston

  Photography, Art, Creativity

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• Iconic clothing has been secularized. . . . A guardsman in a dress uniform is ostensibly an icon of aggression; his coat is red as the blood he hopes to shed. Seen on a coat-hanger, with no man inside it, the uniform loses all its blustering significance and, to the innocent eye seduced by decorative colour and tactile braid, it is as abstract in symbolic information as a parasol to an Eskimo. It becomes simply magnificent.

  Angela Carter

  Hope, Eye, Men

  Angela Carter (1998). “Shaking a Leg: Collected Writings”, Penguin Group USA

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• I have always kept ducks, even as a child, and the colours of their plumage, in particular the dark green and snow white, seemed to me the only possible answer to the questions that are on my mind.

  W. G. Sebald

  Children, Dark, Ducks

  W. G. Sebald (2016). “The Rings of Saturn”, p.136, New Directions Publishing

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• The Olympic flag [] has a white background, with five interlaced rings in the centre: blue, yellow, black, green and red []. This design is symbolic; it represents the five continents of the world, united by Olympism, while the six colours are those that appear on all the national flags of the world at the present time.

  Pierre de Coubertin

  Blue, Yellow, White

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• More than ever, I feel that the human race is one. There are differences of colour, language, culture and opportunities, but people's feelings and reactions are alike. People flee wars to escape death, they migrate to improve their fortunes, they build new lives in foreign lands, they adapt to extreme hardship….

  Sebastiao Salgado

  War, Opportunity, Land

  Sebastião Salgado (2000). “Migrations: Humanity in Transition”

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• It is wonderful how much depends upon the relations of black and white A black and white, if properly balanced, suggests colour.

  Winslow Homer

  Black And White, Wonderful, Relation

  Winslow Homer (1979). “Winslow Homer: Master of the Wood Engraving”

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• In practice it is possible to determine directly the skin colour and hence the ethnic affiliations of the ancient Egyptians by microscopic analysis in the laboratory; I doubt if the sagacity of the researchers who have studied the question has overlooked the possibility.

  Cheikh Anta Diop

  Practice, Doubt, Skins

  Cheikh Anta Diop, E. Curtis Alexander, Mwalimu Imara Mwadilifu (1984). “Cheikh Anta Diop: an African scientist : an axiomatic overview of his teachings and thoughts”, Eca Assoc

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