A Quote by Alex Katz

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

Quote Topics

Abstract After Also Around Away Because Big Bother Certain Certain Point Closed Cubism Drawings Dropped Form Get Get Away Getting Guys Large Life Life Is Life Is A Matisse Mid Paint Paintings Perfect Picasso Picture Point Sort Still Still Life Them Too Wanted Way Were

Quote Author

Alex Katz
American - Artist
Born: July 24, 1927

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

Wassily Kandinsky

Picasso's always been such a huge influence that I thought when I started the cartoon paintings that I was getting away from Picasso, and even my cartoons of Picasso were done almost to rid myself of his influence.

Roy Lichtenstein

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

My core is grime. But I make all kinds of music. Take Picasso. He could paint whatever way he liked. He could do a little ting with a felt tip if he wanted to - it's still going to be a bad boy Picasso at the end.

Stormzy

I think Picasso is more feminine than Matisse.

Gary Hume

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

I said, I don't want to paint things like Picasso's women and Matisse's odalisques lying on couches with pillows. I don't want to paint people. I want to paint something I have never seen before. I don't want to make what I'm looking at. I want the fragments.

Ellsworth Kelly

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

I love the work of Matisse and Picasso, but I don't have enough millions to own one. And I don't really believe in owning art, anyway.

Ravi Shankar

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

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

[Pablo] Picasso really changed my life. It's strange to say so, but I started to see some Picasso paintings very early. I was very young, and he was not so much known.

Agnes Varda

Look at the paintings of Picasso. He is a great painter, but just a subjective artist. Looking at his paintings, you will start feeling sick, dizzy, something going berserk in your mind. You cannot go on looking at Picasso's painting long enough. You would like to get away, because the painting has not come from a silent being. It has come from a chaos. It is a by product of a nightmare. But ninety-nine percent art belongs to that category.

Rajneesh

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.