A plagiarist steals from one person. A true artist steals from everybody.
Painting is a jeu d’esprit.
I’m a joker who has understood his epoch and has extracted all he possibly could from the stupidity, greed and vanity of his contemporaries.
The essential in this time of moral poverty is to create enthusiasm.
When I paint a woman in an armchair, the armchair is there to show illness and death-or as a protection.
What I achieve the first day can be perfectly valid, but it is not satisfying. If I can go that far spontaneously, then I must shed that result as an old skin and inquire further into the unknown, or at least the not-yet-known-to-myself.
I consider a work of art as a product of calculations, calculations that are frequently unknown to the author himself.
What a trade! Poor painters! They always wish to be understood, and they are analysed instead.
You can’t escape your own period. Whether you take sides for or against, you’re always in it.
Even if the painting is green, well then! The ‘subject’ is the green. There is always a subject; it’s a joke to suppress the subject, it’s impossible.
The different styles I have been using in my art must not be seen as an evolution, or as steps towards an unknown ideal of painting. Everything I have ever made was made for the present and with the hope that it would always remain in the present.
No doubt, it is useful for an artist to know all the forms of art which have preceded or which accompany his. That is a sign of strength if it is a question of looking for a stimulus or recognizing mistakes he must avoid.
The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.
We have learned nothing.
I simply painted images of what was before my eyes; it is for others to find hidden meaning in them.
It’s not what the artist does that counts; it’s what he is.
A painter is a man who paints what he sells; an artist, on the other hand, is a man who sells what he paints.
I imitate everyone except myself.
Nature does many things the way I do, but she hides them!
Today we haven’t the heart to expel the painters and poets from society because we refuse to admit to ourselves that there is any danger in keeping them in our midst.