Argument Quote by Philip Guston

“To paint is always to start at the beginning again, yet being unable to avoid the familiar arguments about what you see yourself painting.”

Philip Guston

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.0 out of 5 (6 ratings)

More by Philip Guston

That's what I mean by something grips in a canvas. The moment that happens you are then sucked into the whole thing. Like some…

Philip Guston

Image

Then you learn about composition, you learn about old masters, you form certain ideas about structure. But the inhuman activity of trying to make…

Philip Guston

Image

I go to the studio everyday because one day I may go and the Angel will be there. What if I don't go and…

Philip Guston

Image

Sometimes I scrape off a lot. You have on the floor, like cow dung in the field, this big glob of paint... and it's…

Philip Guston

Image

Painting seems like impossibility, with only a sign now and then of its own light.

Philip Guston

Image

Many works of the past complete what they announce they are going to do, to our increasing boredom. Certain others plague me because I…

Philip Guston

Image

Probably the most potent desire for a painter, an image-maker, is to see it. To see what the mind can think and imagine, to…

Philip Guston

Image

No good to paint in the head - what happens is what happens when you put the paint down - you can only hope…

Philip Guston

Image

We are image-makers and image-ridden... We work until we vanish.

Philip Guston

Image

The canvas you are working on modifies the previous ones in an unending, baffling chain which never seems to finish. What sympathy is demanded…

Philip Guston

Image

I do not see why the loss of faith in the known image and symbol in our time should be celebrated as a freedom.…

Philip Guston

Image

The things I felt... about certain painters of the past that... inspired me, like Cezanne and Manet... that complete losing of oneself in the…

Philip Guston

Image

Explore all 49 Philip Guston quotes

More Argument quotes

A flourishing, morally credible media is a vital component in the maintenance of genuinely public talk, argument about common good.

Rowan Williams

Image

Preaching to the choir actually arms the choir with arguments and elevates the choir's discourse. There's a reason the right does it and does…

Dan Savage

Image

Lutherans, whose arguments and mistakes will not be difficult to contest or discover, do not want to attribute any value to works, and they…

Michael Servetus

Image

Any comprehensive doctrine, religious or secular, can be introduced into any political argument at any time, but I argue that people who do this…

John Rawls

Image

As opposed to getting into arguments about, well, these folks have been treated fairly so now we're going to be doing things that, very…

Barack Obama

Image

There could be no more powerful argument against mixing religion and government than the success of independent African American churches in placing racial segregation…

Susan Jacoby

Image

The inner defenses are unconscious. They consist of a kind of magic aura which the mind builds around cherished belief. Arguments which penetrate into…

Arthur Koestler

Image

On the stage, the characters express themselves more through words than images. So the arguments of the characters and the tension between characters -…

Alan Alda