People From Paris

"You will understand and know the German Republic better when it elects Hindenburg president."

"Nothing is more false than the axiom that governments are belligerent and peoples are pacific."

"Monarchist or collectivist, Germany will not change its nature."

"For six years I have been writing...that the division of Europe into two camps armed to the teeth, one of which, the Triple Alliance, constantly resorts to intimidation, is bound to lead to the greatest European war since the revolutionary period. Well here it is."

"The Japanese spirit wavered from then on between the lure of the West and the need to preserve her territorial integrity. Slowly, inexorably, Western civilization covered up with its veneer this other civilization patiently built up in the course of centuries, long nurtured in suffering and in pride by generations of men and women. But this was only in semblance. The Japan of old still dwells deep in the soul of every inhabitant of her islands and manifests itself at every turn in some euphuistic subtlety or an exquisitely delicate courtesy."

"The spirit of Japan, conceived in the Nara epoch, carried in the womb of her islands throughout the Heian period, delivered in the anguish of the Middle Ages, schooled by the rod of iron of the Tokugawas, fully grown now, benefited from all her past experiences. She cannot forget them."

"Mohammed Ghori had the Hindu temples of Ajmer demolished and ordered the construction of mosques and Quran schools on their ruins…He plundered Kanauj and Kashi and destroyed their temples... [While his generals] destroyed in passing the remaining Buddhist communities of Bihar and destroyed the universities of Nalanda.... Bakhtiar Khilji “established a Muslim capital in Lakhanauti (Gaur) on the Ganga and destroyed, in 1197, its basalt temples. In Odantpuri, in 1202, he massacred two thousand Buddhist monks.... [Meanwhile, back in Delhi:] “This Quwwat-ul-Islam (Might of Islam) was built in a hurry using the debris, chiefly sculpted pillars, of twenty-seven dismantled Hindu temples.” Thirty years later, “Iltutmish did not forget that he was a Muslim conqueror. He showed himself to be very pious, never forgetting to do his five devotional daily….He likewise showed himself totally intolerant vis-à-vis the Hindus who refused to convert, destroying their temples and annihilating Brahmin communities.”"

"Towards the end of the twelfth century, while Western Europe was still wavering between a dying Roman influence and a dawning Gothicism, preliminaries to a medieval era which would make possible the development of a world-wide humanism, Asia had already lived through her classical period and, sinking into decay, was preparing to face a long period of political and spiritual unrest. While India was beginning to suffer under the yoke of the victorious Mussulman, who had come down on her from the mountains of Afghanistan and the plains of Iran, and while the domination of the Khmers was reaching its climax at Angkor, China, under pressure from the barbarians of the north, was withdrawing to the south where the Song empire, thinking itself safe from invasions, continued to live a life of luxury."

"In the years that followed [i.e. 1905 onwards], Derain made a great series of compositions with life-size figures. Some of them he exhibited in the ['Salon des] Indépendants' – a bullfight, a painting with bathers. The bathers were luckily bought and remain preserved for us. Derain burnt all the others in 1908, you see. Not even photographs of them are in existence. Thus the most important original material for the investigation of his development in 1907 is missing.. .[During the 1905–1907 period] he pursued an entirely different path."

"[how anyone could] remain an individual if he had to conform with senseless orders and old foolish things without being asked his opinion on them."

"[K]nowing both [ Picasso and Derain], I feel personally (though I should like to express it as tentatively and hesitatingly as possible) that Derain, by pushing along the road which Picasso pointed down only to turn aside, has arrived at a weightier, more moving conception of pictorial expression."

"[C]o-existent with...a personal poetry and romanticism that is often gloomy and even violent, Vlaminck's pictures have a formal logic, an underlying strength of organization that derives from more than one classical precedent."

"There is only one kind of painting: landscape. It is the most difficult. It has also, I believe, the most simple kind of composition. Because no one can stop us from imagining the world in the way that pleases us most."

"I have found a boat, small with two sails, that would make me happy. Unfortunately, I need one hundred francs.. ..and I haven't got it! If you want, I could give you two canvases which you could sell, just to make you some many and you could give me the hundred francs.. .Kahnweiler [Paris' art-dealer] is the only one who gives me money, and just what we need to live on."

"Vlaminck is entirely possessed by Vlaminck. It is his strength; dare I say, his virtue."

"All this countryside [along the Seine] was calm and peaceful. The strongest emotions I have experienced on the high roads or on the hill tops whence I could see down into the valleys on to the roofs of houses which I felt I could reach out and touch with my hand.. And then I was tempted to begin painting [c. 1893 - 17 years old].. .I composed instinctively and awkwardly. I applied colors with only one idea which justified everything: to express what I felt. I painted hesitantly and exclusively for myself and no one else. It seemed to me that water, sky, clouds and trees understood the happiness they gave me."

"It was only in the evenings that I played the violin [c. 1999-1901, to earn his money for living]. During the day I was free to spend my time as I wished. With a few colours in a box, a canvas and a cheap easel under my arm, I would make my way to the Banks of the Seine.. .I painted to restore my peace of mind, to calm my desires and, above all, to purify myself a little.. .Make a career of painting. How I would have laughed if someone had talked to me about that! To be a painter is not a profession, no more than being an anarchist or a lover, a race-track rider.."

"For me, the discovery of the outside-world, dates from my acquisition of a bicycle [c. 1892]. I spent whole days on the high-roads. I rode through villages, towns and the country-side. I tasted dust; rain poured down on me; I struggled against the wind. With my cycle I was able to visit places never dreamed of.. ..thanks to my bicycle I saw fort he first time the whole of the valley of the Seine from Chatou to Havre, Mantes, Bonnières, Rouen, Duyclair and Tancarville."

"What, after all, is a pretty woman? It's a mere subjective impression – what you yourself think of her. That's what I paint, another kind of beauty of my own."

"[with painting] directly tube against canvas, one soon becomes too slick.. .I regretfully realized that my composition was reduced to no more than a series of coloured rhythms, harmonious, discordant, monotonous and that, from simplification to simplification, I was falling into the trap of decoration. I no longer got to the bottom of things: I no longer cut through to their heart. The decorative spirit was leading me to forget painting."

"The war [World War 1] gave me a certainty of belief. I grew aware of the bankruptcy of theories, of the theories of intellectuals as well as artists. L'art pour l'art and other grave problems no longer gave me a headache; they seemed to me so much bosh hand interested me as little as platonic love."

"My father was a violinist, my mother a pianist. I was born into a world of music...The practicing of my father's pupils accompanied every thought and action of my childish life. ...Then when I was thirty [c. 1906], my career as musician was brought to an end by Vollard [art-dealer in Paris] who bought all the pictures I possessed, pictures which I had painted over several years with unbounded enthusiasm during such hours of freedom as I was able to spare between [music]-lessons to my pupils."

"I wanted to burn down the 'École de Beaux Arts' with my cobalts and vermilions and I wanted to express my feelings with my brushes without troubling what painting was like before me.. .Life and me, me and life."

"I always look at everything with the eyes of a child. I feel enthusiastic for things today fort he same reasons as I was enthusiastic about them as a child...I remember one summer morning when I was twelve years old [1888], I was with my father. We were following a road which crossed the plain from Rueil to Croissy. The whole plain was a solid field of corn and the ears stood higher than my head. I still retain today the impression of the vast expanse, spangled with flowers and filled with the drone of insects. Often, later on, I have tried to recapture, to fix firmly in my mind once again, the impression of that world around me, of the sun which burns my face and hands.. .Every time a see a field of corn I an reminded of that morning."

"The thought of becoming a painter never as much as occurred to me. I would have laughed out loud if someone had suggested that I choose painting as a career. To be a painter is not a business, no more than to be an artist, lover, racer, dreamer, or prizefighter. It is a gift of Nature, a gift.."

"There is often more psychic appeal in a so-called ugly woman than there is in a pretty one; and, in my ideal, I reconstruct her to bring that beauty forth in terms of line or volume."

"[T]ranslated by instinct, without any method, not merely an artistic truth but above all a human one."

"These Africans being primitive, uncomplex, uncultured, can express their thought by a direct appeal to the instinct. Their carvings are informed with emotions. So Nature gives me the material with which to construct a world of my own, governed, not by literal limitations, but by instinct and sentiment."

"..a revolt against an established order in painting, a revolt against an established order in society, a same spirit of provocation.."

"[Picasso is guilty of] having dragged French painting into the most dismal 'impasse' and of having led it into in describable confusion. From 1900 – 1930, he led it towards negation, impotence and death. All alone with himself Picasso is impotence made man. Nature havinf denied him a real character, all his intelligence and malice have been employed to fabricate a personality."

"If I paint a girl in the sunlight, it's the sunlight I am painting, not the real girl; and even for that I should have the sunlight on my palette. I don't care for an accidental effect of light and shade, a thing of 'mere charm'."

"The Japanese see things that way. They don't paint sunlight, they don't cast shadows that perplex one and falsify the true shape of things. The Egyptian figures have simplicity, dignity, directness, unity; they express motion almost as if by a conventional formula, like writing itself, so direct it is. So I seek a logical method of rendering my idea."

"Neither Derain, nor myself, were what was conveniently called in this period the bohemians, the bad men: we were simply nonconformists, the outsiders"

"Solo voy con mi pena Sola va mi condena Correr es mi destino Para burlar la ley Perdido en el corazón De la grande Babylon Me dicen el clandestino Por no llevar papel Pa' una ciudad del norte Yo me fui a trabajar Mi vida la dejé Entre Ceuta y Gibraltar Soy una raya en el mar Fantasma en la ciudad Mi vida va prohibida Dice la autoridad"

"Ouvriers, paysans, nous sommes Le grand parti des travailleurs La terre n'appartient qu'aux hommes L'oisif ira loger ailleurs Combien de nos chairs se repaissent Mais si les corbeaux, les vautours Un de ces matins disparaissent Le soleil brillera toujours."

"Il n'est pas de sauveurs suprêmes Ni Dieu, ni César, ni tribun Producteurs, sauvons-nous nous-mêmes Décrétons le salut commun Pour que le voleur rende gorge Pour tirer l'esprit du cachot Soufflons nous-mêmes notre forge Battons le fer quand il est chaud."

"C'est la lutte finale Groupons-nous, et demain L'Internationale Sera le genre humain."

"L'État comprime et la loi triche L'impôt saigne le malheureux Nul devoir ne s'impose au riche Le droit du pauvre est un mot creux C'est assez, languir en tutelle L'égalité veut d'autres lois Pas de droits sans devoirs dit-elle Égaux, pas de devoirs sans droits."

"Les rois nous saoulaient de fumées Paix entre nous, guerre aux tyrans Appliquons la grève aux armées Crosse en l'air, et rompons les rangs S'ils s'obstinent, ces cannibales À faire de nous des héros Ils sauront bientôt que nos balles Sont pour nos propres généraux."

"Debout, les damnés de la terre Debout, les forçats de la faim La raison tonne en son cratère C'est l'éruption de la fin Du passé faisons table rase Foule esclave, debout, debout Le monde va changer de base Nous ne sommes rien, soyons tout."

"Me llaman el desaparecido Que cuando llega ya se ha ido Volando vengo, volando voy Deprisa, deprisa a rumbo perdido Cuando me buscan nunca estoy Cuando me encuentran yo no soy El que está enfrente porque ya Me fui corriendo más allá Me dicen el desaparecido Fantasma que nunca está Me dicen el desagradecido Pero esa no es la verdad Yo llevo en el cuerpo un dolor Que no me deja respirar Llevo en el cuerpo una condena Que siempre me echa a caminar"

"Todo es mentira en este mundo Todo es mentira la verdad Todo es mentira yo me digo Todo es mentira ¿Por qué será?"

"Mentira la que manda Mentira comanda"

"On l'a tuée à coups de chassepot A coups de mitrailleuse, Et roulée avec son drapeau Dans la terre argileuse. Et la tourbe des bourreaux gras Se croyait la plus forte. Tout ça n'empêche pas, Nicolas Qu'la Commune n'est pas morte."

"[Bonnard] catches fleeting poses, steals unconscious gestures, crystallises the most transient expressions."

"In Bonnard's work, Impressionism becomes insipid and falls into decline."

"[..according to Gauguin ] the impression of nature must be wedded to the aesthetic sentiment which chooses, arranges, simplifies and synthesizes. The painter ought not to rest until he has given birth to the child of his imagination.. ..begotten in a union of his mind with reality. Gauguin insisted on a logical construction of composition, on a harmonious apportionment of light and dark colors, the simplification of forms and proportions, so as to endow the outline's of forms with a powerful and eloquent expression.. ..He also insisted upon luminous and pure colors."

"Bonnard was the humorist among us; his nonchalant gaiety, his wit was evident in his pictures [many of daily-life in the Paris' streets], in which a kind of satiric quality was always embodied n the decorative spirit.. .Bonnard did not resemble Denis or Vuillard in any way, yet all three approached life with a noble determination which was a god-send to me."

"It's not just the colors that radiate in a Bonnard; there's also the heat of mixed emotions, rubbed into smoothness, shrouded in chromatic veils and intensified by unexpected spatial conundrums and by elusive, uneasy figures."

"I work in the mornings and in the afternoons I go to the Latin Quarter. It is a long way from the Batignolles district to the Pantheon: Fortunately there is the Metro. It amuses me to see the people squashed together, and among them are some pretty faces which I draw in the evenings, from memory, in my sketchbook."