Matisse Quotes

• My best efforts were some modern things that looked like very lousy Matisses. Thank God I had the sense to realize they were lousy, and leave Paris.

  Norman Rockwell

  Humor, Artist, Paris

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• Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the Present with the Past. Neither in countries without a Present nor in those without a Past is it to be encountered. Proust in Venice, Matisse's birdcages overlooking the flower market at Nice, Gide on the seventeenth-century quais of Toulon, Lorca in Granada, Picasso by Saint-Germain-des-Prés: there lies civilization and for me it can exist only under those liberal regimes in which the Present is alive and therefore capable of assimilating the Past.

  Cyril Connolly

  Country, Nice, Lying

  "The Unquiet Grave" by Cyril Connolly, (Part 2), 1951.

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• Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He copies it five times, ten times, always clarifying the line. He’s convinced that the last, the most stripped down, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and in fact, most of the time, it was the first. In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt.

  Pablo Picasso

  Drawing, Lasts, Firsts

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• In the end there is only Matisse.

  Pablo Picasso

  Ends

  Pablo Picasso, David F. Setford, Norton Gallery and School of Art (1994). “Pablo Picasso: a vision”, Norton Gallery & School of Art

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• The problem with Matisse is that I can't ever figure out when he's done a good painting or a bad painting because I don't know how to analyse him. I just know that I like the way he put it on and I like his airs and forms.

  Susan Rothenberg

  Air, Done, Way

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• Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin - find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less.

  Maya Angelou

  Beautiful, Falling In Love, Art

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• All things considered, there is only Matisse.

  Pablo Picasso

  All Things

  Pablo Picasso, Maria Constantino (2001). “Picasso posters”

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• I'd like to write the way Matisse paints.

  A. S. Byatt

  Writing, Way, Paint

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• If people knew what Matisse, supposedly the painter of happiness, had gone through, the anguish and tragedy he had to overcome to manage to capture that light which has never left him, if people knew all that, they would also realize that this happiness, this light, this dispassionate wisdom which seems to be mine, are sometimes well-deserved, given the severity of my trials.

  Henri Matisse

  Happiness, Light, People

  Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.11, Univ of California Press

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• You cannot deny your origins: I love Kirchner more than Matisse, although Matisse was a greater artist. That isn't to do with nationality. It's a stronger feeling.

  Georg Baselitz

  Artist, Feelings, Patriotism

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• It is comparatively easy to achieve a certain unity in a picture by allowing one colour to dominate, or by muting all the colours. Matisse did neither. He clashed his colours together like cymbals and the effect was like a lullaby.

  John Berger

  Artist, Unity, Together

  John Berger (2008). “Selected Essays of John Berger”, p.71, Vintage

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• Before he did all those lovely line drawings, Matisse would make really detailed charcoal drawings and tear them up. He wouldn't leave them about... I understand what he was doing: discovering what's there... to make the line meaningful, to find a linear solution.

  David Hockney

  Meaningful, Drawing, Lovely

  "David Hockney". Book by Marco Livingstone, 1976.

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• Matisse renovates rather than innovates.

  Guillaume Apollinaire

  Renewal

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• It was Matisse who took the first step into the undiscovered land of the ugly.

  Gelett Burgess

  Beauty, Land, Ugly

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• In their pursuit of the same supreme end, Matisse and Picasso stand side by side, Matisse representing color and Picasso form.

  Wassily Kandinsky

  Color, Sides, Ends

  Wassily Kandinsky (2012). “Concerning the Spiritual in Art”, p.18, Courier Corporation

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• No one would want to pay a penny for an empty canvas by me. But it would be quite another if the empty canvas were signed by a great artist. I would be surprised if an empty canvas by Picasso or Matisse signed and inscribed with the words, 'I wanted to paint such and such on this canvas, but did not do so,' would not fetch thousands... After all, with an empty canvas, the possibilities are limitless, and so perhaps is the cash.

  Semir Zeki

  Artist, Fetch, Cash

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• Futurism and Cubism are comparable in importance to the invention of perspective, for which they substituted a new concept of space. All subsequent movements were latent in them or brought about by them.. ..the two movements cannot be regarded as in opposition to each other, even though they started from opposite points; I maintain [an idea approved by Appolinaire and later by Matisse that they are two extremes of the same sign, tending to coincide at certain points which only the poetic instinct of the painter can discover: 'poetry' being the content and 'raison d'tre' of art.

  Gino Severini

  Art, Opposites, Ideas

  "Letters of the great artists" by Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, (pp. 248-249), 1963.

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• My little Renoirs. Matisse describes having seen Renoir make these tiny canvases. When he had finished working, he would use up the color left in his brushes on them.

  Jean Cocteau

  Color, Tiny, Use

  Jean Cocteau, Pierre Chanel (1988). “Past tense: diaries”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

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• In the dream world of Matisse and the gritty reality of American frontier, the diversity of women in our society offers the chance for greater exploration and even greater inspiration.

  Vera Wang

  Dream, Inspiration, Reality

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• Have not Manet and Monet, Cézanne and Matisse, rendered to painting something of the same service which Keats and Shelley gave to poetry after the solemn and ceremonious literary perfections of the eighteenth century? They have brought back to the pictorial art a new draught of joie de vivre; and the beauty of their work is instinct with gaiety, and floats in sparkling air. I do not expect these masters would particularly appreciate my defence, but I must avow an increasing attraction to their work.

  Winston Churchill

  Art, Air, Appreciate

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• Near the end of his life, Henri Matisse's preferred attire was evening wear,
  by which I mean pajamas.

  Holland Cotter

  Mean, Evening, Pajamas

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• I've photographed everybody from Matisse to Isamu Noguchi.

  Carl Van Vechten

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• Every so often every artist feels, 'I'll never paint again. The muse has gone out the window.' In 1985, I hardly painted at all for three months, and it was agonizing. I looked at reproductions. I stared at Matisse. I stared at the Old Masters. I stared at the Quattrocento. And I thought to myself - Don't push it! If you try too hard to get at something, you almost push it away.

  Helen Frankenthaler

  Artist, Trying, Three

  "Artful Survivor". Interview with Deborah Salomon, www.nytimes.com. May 14, 1989.

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• But I'm interested in the Barnes Collection in Philadelphia. I hear there are some of the worst Matisses there. I like seeing bad art by good artists. It's inspiring. I'm able to identify with them. It makes them real.

  Jemima Kirke

  Art, Real, Philadelphia

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Picasso and Matisse were the guys I wanted to get away from, and cubism is all still lifes. Their paintings are all closed drawings. And still life is a perfect form for that. By the mid-'50s, I sort of dropped the still life. The large picture was a way of getting around them, too. The abstract expressionists were also into the large form because it was a way of getting around Matisse and Picasso. Picasso can't paint big paintings. Matisse didn't bother after a certain point.

  Alex Katz

  Drawing, Perfect, Guy

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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