Matisse Quotes - Page 2

• As an artist you have to find something that deeply interests you. It's not enough to make art that is about art, to look at Matisse and Picasso and say, how can I paint like them? You have to be obsessed by something that can't come out in any other way, then the other things - the skill and technique - will follow.

  Anselm Kiefer

  Art, Skills, Technique

  42 Copy quote

• I can only paint in India. Europe belongs to Picasso, Matisse, Braque India belongs only to me.

  Amrita Sher-Gil

  Europe, India, Paint

  34 Copy quote

• Modernism in a way, early modernism, for instance, in pictures, was turning against perspective and Europe. And all early modernism is actually from out of Europe, when you think of cubism is African, is looking at Africa, Matisse is looking at the arabesque, Oceania. Europe was the optical projection that had become photography, that had become film, that became television and it conquered the world.

  David Hockney

  Photography, Thinking, Europe

  "Interview: “John Tusa Interviews David Hockney” (2004)". Interview with John Tusa, www.americansuburbx.com. May 21, 2009.

  30 Copy quote

  Show source

• To any writer: Teach yourself to work in uncertainty. Many writers are anxious when they begin, or try something new. Even Matisse painted some of his Fauvist pictures in anxiety. Maybe that helped him to simplify. Character, discipline, negative capability count. Write, complete, revise. If it doesn't work, begin something else.

  Bernard Malamud

  Writing, Character, Discipline

  Bernard Malamud, Lawrence M. Lasher (1991). “Conversations with Bernard Malamud”, p.59, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I wanted to paint in a folk-artist-y way. My heroes were Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, and Rembrandt. I think Picasso is about as a modern as I got. But I incorporated things that they rejected as well as movements that happened later.

  Joni Mitchell

  Hero, Thinking, Artist

  4 Copy quote

• You couldn't forget Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Joan Miro either. And it had to be, you know, at least as good or better.

  Frank Stella

  Forget, Be You, Knows

  Source: www.wbur.org

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Look, Matisse I ain't. You know how they have on the invitations, a reception for the artist will be held at... And I say, Look, you gotta change this. I'm not an artist. I'm a photographer, a skilled craftsman.

  Phil Stern

  Artist, Looks, Photographer

  4 Copy quote

• Art comes from art: I remember going to the Matisse show and seeing how Matisse had taken one of his own paintings, worked from it and transformed it, and that had led on to the next one and the next.

  Anthony Caro

  Art, Taken, Next

  6 Copy quote

• When I tried to do something else, everyone behaved as if I was Gypsy Rose Lee trying to paint a Matisse.

  Zoë Heller

  Rose, Trying, Gypsy

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

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Matisse can make you hate your life for its comparatively insipid joys.

  Peter Schjeldahl

  Hate, Joy, Insipid

  Peter Schjeldahl (2008). “Let's see: writings on art from the New Yorker”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• There's no concession to the fact that Dylan might be a more sophisticated singer than Whitney Houston, that he's probably the most sophisticated singer we've had in a generation. Nobody is identifying our popular singers like a Matisse or Picasso. Dylan's a Picasso - that exuberance, range, and assimilation of the whole history of music.

  Leonard Cohen

  Houston, Singers, Might

  8 Copy quote

• The Matisse seemed to respond to the decreasing light by increasing its own wattage. Every object in the room was drained of color, but the Matisse stood firm in the de-escalating illumination, its beauty turning functionality inside out, making itself a more practical and useful presence than anything else in sight.

  Steve Martin

  Light, Sight, Illumination

  Steve Martin (2010). “An Object of Beauty”, p.75, Hachette UK

  4 Copy quote

  Show source