A Quote by John Singer Sargent
A portrait is a painting with something wrong with the mouth.
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You have bits of canvas that are unpainted and you have these thick stretcher bars. So you see that a painting is an object; that it's not a window into something - you're not looking at a landscape, you're not looking at a portrait, but you're looking at a painting. It's basically: A painting is a painting is a painting. And it's what Frank Stella said famously: What you see is what you see.
I was good friends with Frank Sinatra, I heard Steve Kaufman painting his portrait, so I asked Steve to paint my portrait.
A portrait is a picture in which there is just a tiny little something not quite right about the mouth.
The explanation of the propensity of the English people to portrait painting is to be found in their relish for a Fact. Let a man do the grandest things, fight the greatest battles, or be distinguished by the most brilliant personal heroism, yet the English people would prefer his portrait to a painting of the great deed. The likeness they can judge of; his existence is a Fact. But the truth of the picture of his deeds they cannot judge of, for they have no imagination.
Eloquence is a painting of thought; and thus those who, after having painted it, add something more, make a picture instead of a portrait.
I was hoping to do an impressionist painting, but I wanted a good likeness and I wanted to create a feeling of the lady as a person, as a human being rather than as a figurehead for the monarchy and a pomp-and-circumstance sort of formal portrait. I wanted more of a relaxed portrait.
It is for the artist... in portrait painting to put on canvas something more than the face the model wears for that one day; to paint the man, in short, as well as his features.
An honest self-portrait is extremely rare because a man who has reached the degree of self-consciousness presupposed by the desire to paint his own portrait has almost always also developed an ego-consciousness which paints himself painting himself, and introduces artificial highlights and dramatic shadows.
When I was first painting the Monopoly guy I received a criticism. People said, "You're just painting cartoon characters, anyone can do that," but I'm actually a very skilled artist. That's why I released a Jack Nicholson portrait right after that that was very detailed in the face to show my skills.
There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk.
I am only interested in painting the actual person, in doing a painting of them, not in using them to some ulterior end of art. For me, to use someone doing something not native to them would be wrong.
Painting has always been a means of self-expression for me. Therefore, I paint because I have to and need to, not necessarily because I want to. Subconsciously or not, the figures I paint are a reflection of myself and whatever mood I am in at the time, so every painting is in essence a self-portrait.
I was born with the wrong sign
In the wrong house
With the wrong ascendancy
I took the wrong road
That led to
The wrong tendencies
I was in the wrong place
At the wrong time
For the wrong reason
And the wrong rhyme
On the wrong day
Of the wrong week
Used the wrong method
With the wrong technique
Wrong
Wrong.
I do not think my painting has ever been revolutionary. It was not directed against any kind of painting. I have never wanted to prove that I was right and someone else wrong.
A writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees. No one can tell him about that. No one can control that reality. It reminds me of something Pablo Picasso was supposed to have said to Gertrude Stein while he was painting her portrait. Gertrude said, “I don’t look like that.” And Picasso replied, “You will.” And he was right.
Each painting, I feel like I kind of might have gotten something. If I feel like I totally got it, there's probably something wrong and it's not finished. And if I really feel like I understand it then I'm done with these paintings and I'll have to do something else.
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