It is well for young men to have a model, but let them draw the curtain over it while they are painting.
The work of a man is the explanation of the man.
There are noble tones, ordinary ones, tranquil harmonies, consoling ones, others which excite by their vigour.
The public wants to understand and learn in a single day, a single minute, what the artist has spent years learning.
My eyes close and uncomprehendingly see the dream in the infinite space that stretches away, elusive, before me.
No one wants my painting because it is different from other people’s peculiar, crazy public that demands the greatest possible degree of originality on the painter’s part and yet won’t accept him unless his work resembles that of the others!
You may dream freely when you listen to music as well as when you look at painting. When you read a book you are the slave of the author’s mind.
In Europe men and women have intercourse because they love each other. In the South Seas they love each other because they have had intercourse. Who is right?
Why work? The gods are there to lavish upon the faithful the good gifts of nature.
In art, all who have done something other than their predecessors have merited the epithet of revolutionary; and it is they alone who are masters.
Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise, what would become of beauty?
Stay firmly in your path and dare; be wild two hours a day!
The single most powerful tool for winning a negotiation is the ability to get up and walk away from the table without a deal.
If you see a tree as blue, then make it blue.
The flat sound of my wooden clogs on the cobblestones, deep, hollow and powerful, is the note I seek in my painting.
I have always wanted a mistress who was fat, and I have never found one. To make a fool of me, they are always pregnant.
Do not copy nature. Art is an abstraction. Rather, bring your art forth by dreaming in front of her and think more of creation.
Night is here. All is at rest. My eyes close in order to see without actually understanding the dream that flees before men infinite space; and I experience the languorous sensation produced by the mournful procession of my hopes.
There are two sorts of beauty; one is the result of instinct, the other of study. A combination of the two, with the resulting modifications, brings with it a very complicated richness, which the art critic ought to try to discover.
A great sentiment can be rendered immediately. Dream on it and look for the simplest form in which you can express it.