Willem de Kooning Quotes

40 quotes in 421 categories

• The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
• I don't paint to live, I live to paint.
• The drawings that interest me most are made with closed eyes. With eyes closed, I feel my hand slide down on the paper. I have…
• Once, after finishing a picture, I thought I would stop for awhile, take a trip, do things-the next time I thought of this, I found…
• The artist fills space with an attitude. The attitude never comes from himself alone.
• Yes, I am influenced by everbody. But every time I put my hands in my pockets I find someone else's fingers there.
• I'm not interested in 'abstracting' or taking things out or reducing painting to design, form, line, and color. I paint this way because I can…
• In art one idea is as good as another.
• Every so often, a painter has to destroy painting. Cezanne did it, Picasso did it with Cubism. Then Pollock did it. He busted our idea…
• Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented
• Even abstract shapes must have a likeness
• I make pictures and someone comes in and calls it art.
• An artist is forced by others to paint out of his own free will.
• My interest in desperation lies only in that sometimes I find myself having become desperate. Very seldom do I start out that way. I can…
• Whatever an artist's personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical. He…
• I paint the way I do because I can keep on putting more and more things in - like drama, pain, anger, love, a figure,…
• Im not someone whos ever said anything definitive about his work. In my life also I have very little fixed form. I can change overnight.
• Art should not have to be a certain way,
• Even an abstract form has to have a likeness.
• Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure.

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