High culture is nothing but a child of that European perversion called history, the obsession we have with going forward, with considering the sequence of generations a relay race in which everyone surpasses his predecessor, only to be surpassed by his successor. Without this relay race called history there would be no European art and what characterizes it: a longing for originality, a longing for change. Robespierre, Napoleon, Beethoven, Stalin, Picasso, they're all runners in the relay race, they all belong to the same stadium.
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There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.
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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-Pr?s: 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.
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Well, youth is the period of assumed personalities and disguises. It is the time of the sincerely insincere.
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Art is a lie which makes us realize the truth.
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Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.
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I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful? One must speak of problems in painting!
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I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it
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Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time.
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Give me a museum, and I'll fill it.
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Every positive value has its price in negative terms. The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima
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I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money.
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Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.
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Accidents, try to change them -- it's impossible. The accidental reveals man.
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There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun
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It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.
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The chief enemy of creativity is good taste.
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The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about it. The more technique there is, the less there is.
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Accidents, try to change them-it's impossible. The accidental reveals man.
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I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.
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Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
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The artist is a receptacle for the emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web.
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Art washes away the dust of everyday life.
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Genius is personality with two measures of talent
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Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.
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As an artist, all I need is my paints and brushes - and someone to drag me away when the canvas is done
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Drink to me.
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All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up
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Art is a lie that tells the truth.
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Is there anything more dangerous than sympathetic understanding?
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