Quotes About Expression

It does one good to read things like that, more than most of the stuff the decadents write, with their passion for saying the most obvious things in the most wildly contorted phrases.

There are certain times when it is far from clear to us that art should be something sacred or good.

And then, don't forget that I am not a born melancholic. The general nickname I have in this neighborhood is " `t schildermenneke," [The little painter fellow] and it is not without a certain dose of malice that I go abroad.

Am vrut sa arat ca a muri... este un act la fel de simplu ca si caderea unei frunze... cateva maini de pamant intoarse si o cruce mica de lemn.

I should very much like to see Millet reproductions in the schools. I think there are children who would become painters if only they saw good things.

But since then I've had no chance of getting models, though on the other hand I did have the chance to study the colour question. And if I should find models again for my figures later, then I would hope to be able to show that I am after something other than little green landscapes or flowers.

If I were living near you, I should try to make you understand that it might perhaps be more practical for you to paint with me than to write, and that you might be able to express your feelings more easily that way. In any case I can do something personally about your painting, but I am not in the writing profession.

An artist needn't be a clergyman or a churchwanderer, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men.

The day will come, however, when people will see they are worth more than the price of the paint and my living expenses, very meagre on the whole, which we put into them"_ Page.419

Art is something which, though produced by human hands, is not wrought by hands alone, but wells up from a deeper source, from man's soul"_Page.268

can you tell what goes on within by looking at what happens without? There may be a great fire in your soul, but no one ever comes to warm himself by it, all that passers-by can see is a little smoke coming out of the chimney and they walk on"_Page.70-71

The more I am spent, ill, a broken pitcher, so much more am I an artist.

If I can manage to paint the coloring of my own head, which is not to be done without some difficulty, I shall likewise be able to paint the heads of other good souls

You see I am not stronger than other people in that if I neglected myself too much, it would be the same with me as with so many painters (so very many if one thinks it over), I should drop dead, or worse still - become insane or an idiot.

As to the one by Roll, I myself was once present at such a scene, complete in every detail, and I think the beauty of his picture is that it expresses such a situation so accurately, though one finds but very few of the details in it. I thought of a saying by Corot, "Il y a des tableaux où il n'y a rien et pourtant tout y est." [There are pictures in which there is nothing and yet everything is in them.]

But what would Monsieur Tersteeg say about this picture when he said before a Sisley - Sisley, the most discreet and gentle of the impressionists - "I can't help thinking that the artist who painted that was a little tipsy." If he saw my picture, he would say that it was delirium tremens in full swing.

Ludilo je spasonosno, jer ?ovek možda postaje manje isklju?iv.

L'arte è l'uomo sommato alla natura.

There may be a great fire in our hearts yet no one comes to warm themselves by it and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke

Paul Gauguin's remark about his friend Van Gogh is not without interest: "Il oubliait même," wrote the famous painter of négresses, "d'écrire le hollandais, et comme on a pu voir par la publication de ses lettres à son frère, il n'écrivait jamais qu'en français, et cela admirablement, avec des 'Tant qu'à, Quant à,' à n'en plus finir."[1]

You are kind to painters, and I tell you, the more I think it over, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people. You will say that then it would be a good thing to do without art and artists.

it can do no harm if others reflect whether we are in this world to tear down instead of build up. The expression "We don't need that any more" - how readily it is used, and what a stupid and ugly phrase it is.

There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke