visualization

"[I]n 1892, Cézanne executed one of his most important works, '... It was in this same year that I saw Cézanne's pictures for the first time. It was at Tanguy's... Père Tanguy, a color merchant on a small scale, was the benefactor of more than one unrecognized artist. He considered himself something of a "rebel" because he had not been shot down under the Commune by the party of law and order. In reality he was just a good old soul who extended credit to impecunious artists, and took a passionate interest in their work. But he had a marked predilection for those whom he called with respectful emphasis, "the gentlemen of the School": Guillaumin, Van Gogh, Pissarro, and Vignon, to mention only a few. To his way of thinking, being one of the "School" was equivalent to being "modern": which meant that one must banish "tobacco juice" from the palette forever, and paint "thick." But with good-hearted indulgence, he grudgingly bestowed his respect... upon the luckless painter who honestly sought to earn his daily bread with ivory black. And if the truth were known, Père Tanguy, in common with the very "philistines" whom he scorned, was convinced at the bottom of his heart that hard work and good behavior were not merely prerequisites, but indispensable elements of success. Accordingly, referring to the author [Cézanne] of a picture done with the forbidden "thin mediums," he said candidly, "He's not one of the 'School'; he'll have a hard time arriving. But he'll get there in the end; he never plays the races and he doesn't drink a drop!""

"When you wish to see whether the general effect of your picture corresponds with that of the object represented after nature, take a mirror and set it so that it reflects the actual thing, and then compare the reflection with your picture, and consider carefully whether the subject of the two images is in conformity with both, studying especially the mirror. The mirror ought to be taken as a guide... you see the picture made upon one plane showing things which appear in relief, and the mirror upon one plane does the same. The picture is on one single surface, and the mirror is the same. ...if you but know well how to compose your picture it will also seem a natural thing seen in a great mirror."

"If you wish to thoroughly accustom yourself to correct and good positions for your fingers, fasten a frame or a loom divided into squares by threads between your eye and the nude figure which you are representing, and then make the same squares upon the paper where you wish to draw the said nude but very faintly. You should then put a pellet of wax on a part of the network to serve as a mark which as you look at your model should always cover the pit of the throat, or if he should have turned his back make it cover one of the vertebrae of the neck. ...The squares you draw may be as much smaller than those of the network in proportion as you wish your figure to be less than life size..."

"Take a piece of glass of the size of a half sheet of royal folio paper, and fix it... between your eye and the object you wish to portray. Then move it away until your eye is two-thirds of a braccio away from the piece of glass, and fasten your head by means of an instrument in such a way as to prevent any movement of it whatsoever. Then close or cover up one eye, and with a brush or a piece of red chalk finely ground mark out on the glass what is visible beyond it; afterwards, copy it by tracing on paper from the glass, then prick it out upon paper of a better quality and paint it if you so desire, paying special attention to the aerial perspective."

"But who can paint Like nature? Can Imagination boast, Amid its gay creation, hues like hers?"

"There is no such thing as a dumb poet or a handless painter. The essence of an artist is that he should be articulate."

"… ζωγραφίαν ποίησιν σιωπῶσαν προσαγορεύει [sc. ὁ Σιμωνίδης], τὴν δὲ ποίησιν ζωγραφίαν λαλοῦσαν."

"With hue like that when some great painter dips His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse."

"Wrought he not well that painted it? He wrought better that made the painter; and yet he's but a filthy piece of work."

"The painting is almost the natural man: For since dishonour traffics with man's nature, He is but outside; pencill'd figures are Ev'n such as they give out."

"I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint."

"The form of my painting is the content."

"Le Bain... has proved as defiant in execution as it had been in conception... [H]e abandoned , a technique perfected by Leonardo da Vinci and exploited by successful Salon painters... Manet... did away with most... half-tones—the transitions between highlights and shadows—such that his figures... looked harshly lit. ...Since an optical illusion makes light colors advance and dark ones recede, most artists painted a dark undercoat... la sauce.., a transluscent mixture of linseed oil, turpentine and often bitumen... Manet... after The Absinthe Drinker, working instead on canvases treated with off-white primers... gave Le Bain a greater luminosity... at the expense of... spatial recession [depth]. ...Painters were usually trained to create a subtle relief on the surface... Dark colors, such as... for shadows, were spread very thin while highlights were "loaded" or "impasted"... in thick layers... [T]ogether with the darker undercoat... whites would advance and the darks retreat. ...Manet boldly disregarded this practice in Le Bain... Though a few... as Gèricault and Courbet, had... experimented with this technique, the boldness of Manet's application witnessed... a new direction in art."

"Monet and Renoir... concentrated... on the waters of the Seine sparkling... dissolving solid forms into dazzling patches of color. Monet... excelled at... light shimmering on the waves. He worked on the same pale ground favored by Manet but... highlighted... with vibrant pigments, some... newly invented... added... in small commas and dashes. Advances in chemistry... meant nineteenth-century painters possessed a much wider range of pigments... [M]any painters... [had] learned to tone down their works by coating them with transparent brownish glazes made from... ingredients... as bitumen. ...Painters who challenged this prejudice against color... notably Delacroix... found themselves reviled by conservative critics. ...The coruscating reflections in [Monet's] La Grenouillère canvases owed much to his use of pigments such as chromium oxide green and cobalt violet. The former... produced from a... reaction involving salts and , was manufactured... in 1862. Cobalt violet [was] invented in 1859 by... Jean Salvétat... Monet blended it with to create a shimmering water... He would eventually... regard this... pigment as an essential for capturing... light and shade: "I have finally discovered the color of the atmosphere... It is violet." ...Monet might never have discovered the true nature of the atmosphere without... chemists..."

"Ottoman miniature painting gave up the warmth, the whimsy, the theatricality, and the multiple meanings of Iranian art in favor of realism, which was also expressed in Ottoman maps, fortress plans and geographies."

"The only good copies are those which exhibit the defects of bad originals."

"The picture that approaches sculpture nearest Is the best picture."

"One question conditions the dynamics and balance of color in the composition of a painting: whence the source of light?"

"Vain is the hope by colouring to display The bright effulgence of the noontide ray Or paint the full-orb'd ruler of the skies With pencils dipt in dull terrestrial dyes."

"Painting responded to the plague-darkened vision of the human condition provoked by repeated exposure to sudden, inexplicable death. Tuscan painters reacted against Giotto's serenity, preferring sterner, hieratic portrayals of religious scenes and figures. The "Dance of Death" became a common theme for art; and several other macabre motifs entered the European repertory."

"I'll get an inspiration and start painting; then I'll forget everything, everything except how things used to be and how to paint it so people will know how we used to live."

"I mix them with my brains, sir."

"I will say of it, It tutors nature: artificial strife Lives in these touches, livelier than life."

"What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who has only eyes if he is a painter, ears if he's a musician, or a lyre in every chamber of his heart if he's a poet, or even, if he's a boxer, only some muscles? Quite the contrary, he is at the same time a political being constantly alert to the horrifying, the passionate or pleasing events of the world, shaping himself completely in their image... No, painting is not made to decorate apartments. It's an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy."

"Look for the kind of nature that suits your temperament. The motif should be observed more for shape and color than for drawing. There is no need to tighten the form which can be obtained without that. Precise drawing is dry and hampers the impression of the whole, it destroys all sensations. Do not define too closely the outlines of things; it is the brushstroke of the right value and color which should produce the drawing. In a mass, the greatest difficulty is not to give the contour in detail, but to paint what is within. Paint the essential character of things, try to convey it by any means whatsoever, without bothering about technique.—When painting, make a choice of subject, see what is lying at the right and what at the left, and work on everything simultaneously. Don't work bit by bit but paint everything at once by placing tones everywhere, with brushstrokes of the right color and value, while noticing what is alongside. Use small brushstrokes and try to put down your perceptions immediately. The eye should not be fixed on one point, but should take in everything, while observing the reflections which the colors produce on their surroundings. Work at the same time upon the sky, water, branches, ground, keeping everything going on an equal basis and unceasingly rework until you have got it. Cover the canvas at the first go, then work at it until you can see nothing more to add. Observe the aerial perspective as well, from the foreground to the horizon, the reflection of the sky, of foilage. Don't be afraid of putting on color, refine the work little by little.—Don't proceed according to rules and principles, but paint what you observe and feel. Paint generously and unhesitatingly, for it is best not to lose the first impression you feel. Don't be timid in front of nature: one must be bold, at the risk of being deceived and making mistakes. One must have only one master—nature; she is the one always to be consulted."

"You who are sitting before me have the power to change my consciousness into painting, poem, melody or anything else!"

"I accept the fact that the important painting of the last hundred years was done in France. American painters have generally missed the point of modern painting from beginning to end.. ..Thus the fact that good European moderns (European artists who lived in the U.S. because of the Nazi-regime, fh) are now here is very important, for they bring with them an understanding of the problems of modern painting. I am particularly impressed with their concept of the source of art being the unconscious. These idea interests me more than these specific artists do, for the two artists I admire most, Picasso and Miró, are still abroad."

"He best can paint them who shall feel them most."

"Lely on animated canvas stole The sleepy eye, that spoke the melting soul."

"The fellow mixes blood with his colors."

"I arrange my subject as I want it, then I go ahead and paint it, like a child. I want a red to be sonorous—to sound, like a bell; if it doesn't turn out that way, I put more reds or other colors till I get it. I am no cleverer than that. I have no rules and no methods; any one can look over my materials or watch how I paint—he will see that I have no secrets. I look at a nude; there are myriads of tiny tints. I must find the ones that will make the flesh on my canvas live and quiver. Nowadays they want to explain everything. But if they could explain a picture it wouldn't be art. Shall I tell you what I think are the two qualities of a work of art? It must be indescribable and it must be inimitable. ...So in our Gothic architecture: each column is a work of art, because the old French monk who set it up and carved its capital did what he liked—not doing everything alike, as... when things are made by machinery or by rules, but each thing different—like the trees in the forest. The work of art must seize upon you, wrap you up in itself, carry you away. It is the means by which the artist conveys his passion; it is the current which he puts forth which sweeps you along in his passion."

"It was Pissarro's sympathetic attitude to all sincere efforts which prompted Theo van Gogh to ask him... whether he could help his brother. After his first attack, Vincent had remained for one year at the Saint-Rémy Asylum... where he had been able to work between repeated spells of madness... [He] had asked Theo to find him a place near Paris... At Theo's request Pissarro was ready to take Vincent into his house... but Madame Pissarro was afraid [for] her children. Pissarro thereupon recommended his old friend, Dr. Gachet at Auvers, who declared himself willing to take care of Vincent. The latter came to Auvers in May 1890; he killed himself there in July of the same year... After the suicide... Theo van Gogh fell seriously ill; he was taken to Holland and died in January 1891. He was replaced at the gallery... M. Boussod, the owner, complained that Theo... had "accumulated appalling things by modern painters which had brought the firm to discredit. Indeed, Theo had left a stock of works by Degas, Gauguin, Pissarro, Guillaumin, Redon, Lautrec, Monet and others. According to M. Boussod only Monet's canvases were saleable..."

"Painting with all its technicalities, difficulties, and peculiar ends, is nothing but a noble and expressive language, invaluable as the vehicle of thought, but by itself nothing."

"If it is the love of that which your work represents — if, being a landscape painter, it is love of hills and trees that moves you — if, being a figure painter, it is love of human beauty, and human soul that moves you — if, being a flower or animal painter, it is love, and wonder, and delight in petal and in limb that move you, then the Spirit is upon you, and the earth is yours, and the fullness thereof."

"It was to the painters of the previous generation that Monet turned... Boudin summed up clothed figures in rapidly noted dashes of color... that... merged the identities of color and line; Jongkind... made sky, rooftops, water, and foliage shimmer in separate dabs of bright paint; Corot employed broad bands of buttery pigment to give the sense of sunlight streaking through foliage to fall on meadow or forest road; Diaz and Rousseau put spots of paint side by side to create a surface mosaic of foliage; Courbet commonly used opaque paint, scraped and dabbed with a palette knife, to form a patchwork of textured areas that adhered as much to surface as to imagined depth. ...Courbet ...insisted that one must paint what one actually sees ...Monet's improvised technique, "sketchy" even in the most finished areas, was ...a further development of the free, somewhat rough way of applying paint which had characterized the mid-century vanguard. In Courbet... free handling was equated with opposition to authority... For other[s] of the same generation, sketchiness was considered forward-looking, independent, and "democratic"... opposed to the highly finished surfaces of officially sanctioned art. Daubigny was accused of giving mere "impressions" of nature... and Millet's shaggy surfaces were treated... as appropriate to his peasant subjects. ...Sincerity, truth, immediacy, spontaneity, natural light, and color, the banishing of muddy colors, the distrust of smooth finish—these were the moral underpinnings of artistic technique that Monet adopted."

"If anyone shall endeavor to represent the forms of the Saints in lifeless pictures with material colors which are of no value (for this notion is vain and introduced by the devil), and does not rather represent their virtues as living images in himself, let him be anathema!"

"A picture is a poem without words."

"Paint me as I am. If you leave out the scars and wrinkles, I will not pay you a shilling."

"Hard features every bungler can command: To draw true beauty shows a master's hand."

"Pictures must not be too picturesque."

"Paint me as I am," said Cromwell, "Rough with age and gashed with wars; Show my visage as you find it, Less than truth my soul abhors."

"Sixtenth century represents the zenith of Ottoman miniature painting. During this time, the influences of the late 15th and early 16th centuries—the encounters with western European portraiture, the growing emphasis on historiographical painting, the impact of ;nautical cartography, and the enduring influence of the Persian legacy – began to crystallize into distinctly Ottoman styles and genres."

"I was always aware, reading Chesterton, that there was someone writing this who rejoiced in words, who deployed them on the page as an artist deploys his paints upon his palette. Behind every Chesterton sentence there was someone painting with words, and it seemed to me that at the end of any particularly good sentence or any perfectly-put paradox, you could hear the author, somewhere behind the scenes, giggling with delight."

": My painting will have to tell many stories. It should be large enough to hold everything. Everything, all the people. There must be a hundred of them. I will work like the spider I saw this morning building its web.First it finds an anchoring point. Here, the heart of my web."

"A flattering painter, who made it his care To draw men as they ought to be, not as they are."

"One picture in ten thousand, perhaps, ought to live in the applause of mankind, from generation to generation until the colors fade and blacken out of sight or the canvas rot entirely away."

"What avails, then, the folly of the painter, who from sinful love of gain depicts that which should not be depicted—that is, with his polluted hands he tries to fashion that which should only be believed in the heart and confessed with the mouth? He makes an image and calls it Christ."

"Well, something must be done for May, The time is drawing nigh— To figure in the Catalogue, And woo the public eye.Something I must invent and paint; But oh my wit is not Like one of those kind substantives That answer Who and What?"

"Delphinum sylvis appingit, fluctibus aprum."

"He that seeks popularity in art closes the door on his own genius: as he must needs paint for other minds, and not for his own."