A Quote by Balthus

I will always find even the worst paintings that attempt some kind of representation better than the best invented paintings. — © Balthus
I will always find even the worst paintings that attempt some kind of representation better than the best invented paintings.
The spot paintings and spin paintings were trying to find mechanical ways to make paintings.
My early paintings weren't that good - I was very influenced by Francis Bacon. But there was a kind of intensity there. And however influenced they may have been by other people, even my earliest paintings were recognisably my own.
I don't paint over my paintings with black paint. I paint black paintings. It isn't because I'm sad, just as I didn't paint red paintings yesterday because I was happy. Nor will I paint yellow paintings tomorrow because I'm jealous.
A photo is like a map, a way of giving me a foot into a kind of reality I want... I'm not trying to make paintings look like photos. I want to make paintings using photos as a reference, the way painters did when photography was first invented.
I always liked paintings to be walls rather than windows. When we see a painting on a wall, it's a window, so I often put my paintings in the middle of the space to make a wall.
Unlike the background in many of the paintings that I was inspired by or paintings that I borrowed poses from - the great European paintings of the past - the background in my work does not play a passive role.
I think that people tend to look at the paintings as being resolved or finite. But, to me, a painting can be an index for all of the paintings I've done and all of the paintings I'm going to do. It's like if I'm doing a film of the Olympics, I'm not examining a specific sport; I'm interested in the overall context.
People are still making paintings. People are still enjoying paintings, looking at paintings. Paintings still have something to tell us. There's a way of being in the world that painting brings to us, that painters bring to the task that we absorb and are able to be in dialogue with. That's something that's part of us.
Some people might think that the paintings are involved with a mythic - not just subject matter - but a certain sort of physical space that the paintings occupy...like personages.
I enjoy thinking about how paintings can change depending on where they are - how they look in a gallery or in relation to other paintings, or in different rooms. Paintings can change the way we experience and see the world.
I think I tend to destroy the better paintings, or those that have been better to a certain extent. I try and take them further, and they lose all their qualities, and they lose everything. I think I would say that I destroy all the better paintings.
I believe that 100, 200, 300 years from now, all these paintings will be around because they're the first paintings of humans doing things off this Earth.
A New York audience generally likes decorative paintings, and decorative paintings go with the couch. If you change the couch, you change the painting. And when you're coming up, and the paintings aren't first-class decoration, you're at a disadvantage for publicity and sales.
One of Cezanne's unfinished paintings... appears to be a completed work even though only a few strokes of paint have been put down. My methods are similar... I expect each of my paintings to appear whole in every stage.
The paintings of Francis Bacon to my eye are very beautiful. The paintings of Bosch or Goya are to my eye very beautiful. I've also stood in front of those same paintings with people who've said, 'let's get on to the Botticellis as soon as possible.' I have lingered, of course.
I want to make beautiful paintings. But I don't make beautiful paintings by putting beautiful paint on a canvas with a beautiful motif. It just doesn't work. I expect my paintings to be strong and surprising.
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