Top 199 Quotes & Sayings by Henri Matisse - Page 3

A painting in an interior spreads joy around it by the colors, which calm us.

One gets into a state of creativity by conscious work.

When I put a green, it is not grass. When I put a blue, it is not the sky.

Photographs will always be impressive because they show us nature, and all artists will find in them a world of sensations. The photographer must therefore intervene as little as possible, so as not to cause photography to lose the objective charm which it naturally possesses, notwithstanding its defects.

After a half-century of hard work and reflection the wall is still there.

All that is not useful in a picture is detrimental. A work of art must be harmonious in its entirety; for superfluous details would, in the mind of the beholder, encroach upon the essential elements.

A young painter who cannot liberate himself from the influence of past generations is digging his own grave.

The role of the artist, like that of the scholar, consists of seizing current truths often repeated to him, but which will take on new meaning for him and which he will make his own when he has grasped their deepest significance.

I have to create an object which resembles the tree. The sign for a tree, and not the sign that other artists may have found for the tree.

My models, my human figures, are never like extras in an interior. They are the main theme of my work. I depend absolutely on my model.

The importance of an artist is to be measured by the quantity of new signs which he has introduced to the language of art.

If it is practiced by a man of taste, the photograph will have the appearance of art (but) the photographer must...intervene as little as possible, so as not to lose the objective charm which it naturally possesses.

I have always sought to be understood and, while I was taken to task by critics or colleagues, I thought they were right, assuming I had not been clear enough to be understood. This assumption allowed me to work my whole life without hatred and even without bitterness toward criticism, regardless of its source. I counted solely on the clarity of expression of my work to gain my ends. Hatred, rancor, and the spirit of vengeance are useless baggage to the artist. His road is difficult enough for him to cleanse his soul of everything which could make it more so.

Do remember that one line does nothing; it is only in relation to another that it creates a volume.

My choice of colors does not rest on any scientific theory; it is based on observation, on feeling, on the experience of my sensibility. Inspired by certain pages of Delacroix, an artist like Signac is preoccupied with complementary colors, and the theoretical knowledge of them will lead him to use a certain tone in a certain place. But I simply try to put down colors which render my sensation.

The arts have a development which comes not only from the individual but also from a whole acquired force, the civilization which precedes us. One cannot do just anything. A talented artist cannot do whatever he pleases. If he only used his gifts, he would not exist. We are not the masters of what we produce. It is imposed on us.

A distinction is made between artists who work directly from nature and those who work purely from imagination. Neither if these methods should be preferred to the exclusion of the other. Often both are used in turn by the same man.

An artist who wants to transpose a composition onto a larger canvas must conceive it over again in order to preserve its expression; he must alter its character and not just fill in the squares into which he has divided his canvas.

An artist must not feel under any constraint.

I am curious about color as one would be visiting a new country, because I have never concentrated so closely on color expression. Up to now I have waited at the gates of the temple.

The splitting up of color [as Impressionists did] brought the splitting up of form and contour . . . Everything is reduced to a mere sensation of the retina, but one which destroys all tranquility of surface and contour. Objects are differentiated only by the luminosity that is given them.

Much of the beauty that arises in art comes from the struggle an artist wages with his limited medium.

What interests me most is neither still life nor landscape, but the human figure.

Did not the artists of the great age of Japanese art change names many times during their careers? I like that; they wanted to safeguard their freedom.

Whoever wishes to devote himself to painting should begin by cutting out his own tongue

Color, even more than drawing, is a means of liberation.

I was very embarrassed when my canvases began to fetch high prices. I saw myself condemned to a future of nothing but Masterpieces.

A work of art must carry in itself its complete significance and impose it upon the beholder even before he can identify the subject-matter.

I didn't expect to recover from my second operation but since I did, I consider that I'm living on borrowed time. Every day that dawns is a gift to me and I take it in that way. I accept it gratefully without looking beyond it. I completely forget my physical suffering and all the unpleasantness of my present condition and I think only of the joy of seeing the sun rise once more and of being able to work a little bit, even under difficult conditions.

When a painting is finished, it's like a new born child, and the artist himself must have time for understanding. How then do you expect an amateur to understand that which the artist dos not yet comprehend.

Color helps to express light, not the physical phenomenon, but the only light that really exists, that in the artist's brain.

I have simply wished to assert the reasoned and independent feeling of my own individuality within a total knowledge of tradition.

For my part I have never avoided the influence of others. I would have considered it cowardice and a lack of sincerity toward myself.

The residuum of another's expression can never be related to one's own feeling.

The artist begins with a vision - a creative operation requiring an effort.

A rapid rendering of a landscape represents only one moment of its existence. I prefer, by insisting upon its essential character, to risk losing charm in order to gain greater stability.

Creation is the artist's true function; where there is no creation there is no art.

I counted solely on the clarity of expression of my work to gain my ends.

What I dream of is an art of balance.

Cutting straight into color reminds me of the direct carving of the sculptor.

Put a colour upon a canvas - it not only colours with that colour the part of the canvas to which the colour has been applied, but it also colours the surrounding space with the complementary.

I was driven on by.. A force which I see today as something alien to my normal life... so I have been no more than a medium as it were.

From the moment I held the box of colors in my hands, I knew this was my life. I threw myself into it like a beast that plunges towards the thing it loves.

Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the various elements which the painter uses to express his sentiments. In a picture every separate part will be visible and... everything which has no utility in the picture is for that reason harmful.

The model for me is a touchstone, it is a door which I must break open in order to reach the garden in which I am alone and feel good, even the model exists only for what use I can make of it.

Composition, the aim of which is expression, alters itself according to the surface to be covered. If I take a sheet of paper of given dimensions, I will jot down a drawing which will have a necessary relation to its format.

I dream of an art of balance, of quietness, something analogous to a good armchair.

A certain color tones you up. It's the concentration of timbres.

I shan't get free of my emotion by copying the tree faithfully, or by drawing its leaves one by one in the common language, but only after identifying myself with it.

A work should contain its total meaning within itself and should impress it on the spectator before he even knows the subject.

Each work of art is a collection of signs invented during the picture's execution to suit the needs of their position. Taken out of the composition for which they were created, these signs have no further use.

If my story were ever to be written truthfully from start to finish, it would amaze everyone.

Perhaps I might be satisfied, momentarily, with a work finished at one sitting, but I would soon get bored looking at it; therefore, I prefer to continue working on it so that later I may recognize it as a work of my mind.

I do not repudiate any of my paintings but there isn't one of them that I would not redo differently, if I had it to redo. My destination is always the same but I work out a different route to get there.

The sign is determined at the moment I use it and for the object of which it must form a part. For this reason I cannot determine in advance signs which never change, and which would be like writing: that would paralyze the freedom of my invention.

The chief function of color should be to serve expression as well as possible.

I am unable to make any distinction between the feeling I get from life and the way I translate that feeling into painting.

Seek the strongest color effect possible... the content is of no importance.

From Bonheur de Vivre - I was thirty-five then - to this cut-out - I am eighty-two - I have not changed; not in the way my friends mean who want to compliment me, no matter what, on my good health, but because all this time I have looked for the same things, which I have perhaps realized by different means.

I am unable to distinguish between the feeling I have for life and my way of expressing it.