The only principle in art is to copy what you see. Dealers in aesthetics to the contrary, every other method is fatal.
Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.
He who is discouraged after a failure is not a real artist.
If the artist succeeds in producing the impression of a movement which takes several moments for accomplishment, his work is certainly much less conventional than the scientific image, where time is abruptly suspended.
Black is the queen of colours.
The artist has only to trust his eyes.
I am like a moon that shines on an immense, unknown sea where ships never pass.
Genius only comes to those who know how to use their eyes and their intelligence.
The delicate droop of the petals standing out in relief, is like the eyelid of a child.
People say I think too much about women, yet, after all what is there more important to think about?
I grant you that the artist does not see Nature as she appears to the vulgar, because his emotion reveals to him the hidden truths beneath appearances.
My drawings are the result of my sculpture.
Mystery is like a kind of atmosphere which bathes the greatest works of the masters.
Even with all the documents, you can never forge nature.
Inside you there’s an artist you don’t know about. He’s not interested in how things look different in moonlight.
In art, immorality cannot exist. Art is always sacred.
The nude alone is well dressed.
Man enjoys living on the edge of his dreams and neglects the real things of the world which are so beautiful. The ignorant and indifferent destroy beautiful things merely by looking at the marble. Things that remake the soul of him who understands them.
If we now seek the spiritual significance of the technique of Michelangelo we shall find that his sculpture expressed restless energy...
The human body is first and foremost a mirror to the soul and its greatest beauty comes from that.
In front of the model I work with the same will to reproduce truth as if I were making a portrait. I do not correct nature, I incorporate myself into it; it directs me. I can only work with a model. The sight of human forms nourishes and comforts me.