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Matisse Quotes

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Matisse Quotes

“We both disliked rude rickshwalas, shepu bhaji in any form, group photographs at weddings, lizards, tea that has gone cold, the habit of taking newspaper to the toilet, kissing a boy who'd just smoked a cigarette et cetra. Another list. The things we loved: strong coffee, Matisse, Rumi, summer rain, bathing together, Tom Hanks, rice pancakes, Cafe Sunrise, black-and-white photographs, the first quiet moments after you wake up in the morning.”

LoveHateMorningPaintingColdCoupleGayRainIndiaNewspapersTeaHomosexualQueerRumiPancakesPhotographsMatisse
Book:Cobalt Blue
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“No one would want to pay a penny for an empty canvas by me. But it would be quite another if the empty canvas were signed by a great artist. I would be surprised if an empty canvas by Picasso or Matisse signed and inscribed with the words, 'I wanted to paint such and such on this canvas, but did not do so,' would not fetch thousands... After all, with an empty canvas, the possibilities are limitless, and so perhaps is the cash.”

IfsWantWould BeWantedArtistPayPossibilityEmptyPaintRecognitionCashCanvasGreat ArtLimitlessPenniesGreat ArtistFetchMatisseEmpty Canvas
Author:Semir Zeki
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“Futurism and Cubism are comparable in importance to the invention of perspective, for which they substituted a new concept of space. All subsequent movements were latent in them or brought about by them.. ..the two movements cannot be regarded as in opposition to each other, even though they started from opposite points; I maintain [an idea approved by Appolinaire and later by Matisse that they are two extremes of the same sign, tending to coincide at certain points which only the poetic instinct of the painter can discover: 'poetry' being the content and 'raison d'tre' of art.”

ArtTwoIdeasCertainSpaceMovementPerspectiveConceptsOppositesImportanceInstinctExtremesInventionPainterOppositionPoetry IsPoeticApprovedLatentCubismTwo ExtremesFuturismMatisseTots
Author:Gino Severini
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“There's no concession to the fact that Dylan might be a more sophisticated singer than Whitney Houston, that he's probably the most sophisticated singer we've had in a generation. Nobody is identifying our popular singers like a Matisse or Picasso. Dylan's a Picasso - that exuberance, range, and assimilation of the whole history of music.”

WholeFactsMightGenerationsSingersRangeSophisticatedDylanAssimilationIdentifyingHoustonConcessionsExuberanceWhitneyMatisseHistory Of Music
Author:Leonard Cohen
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“To any writer: Teach yourself to work in uncertainty. Many writers are anxious when they begin, or try something new. Even Matisse painted some of his Fauvist pictures in anxiety. Maybe that helped him to simplify. Character, discipline, negative capability count. Write, complete, revise. If it doesn't work, begin something else.”

IfsWritingTryingCharacterTeachDisciplineAnxietyNegativeUncertaintySomething NewAnxiousCapabilitySimplifyMatisse
Book:Conversations with Bernard Malamud
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“Modernism in a way, early modernism, for instance, in pictures, was turning against perspective and Europe. And all early modernism is actually from out of Europe, when you think of cubism is African, is looking at Africa, Matisse is looking at the arabesque, Oceania. Europe was the optical projection that had become photography, that had become film, that became television and it conquered the world.”

ThinkingWorldWayFilmTelevisionPerspectivePhotographyEuropeInstanceProjectionModernismCubismMatisseOceania
Author:David Hockney
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“Picasso and Matisse were the guys I wanted to get away from, and cubism is all still lifes. Their paintings are all closed drawings. And still life is a perfect form for that. By the mid-'50s, I sort of dropped the still life. The large picture was a way of getting around them, too. The abstract expressionists were also into the large form because it was a way of getting around Matisse and Picasso. Picasso can't paint big paintings. Matisse didn't bother after a certain point.”

WayStillsBigsWantedFormLife IsGuyCertainPerfectPaintingPaintDrawingBotherAbstractGet AwayStill LifeCubismMatisse
Author:Alex Katz
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“The Matisse seemed to respond to the decreasing light by increasing its own wattage. Every object in the room was drained of color, but the Matisse stood firm in the de-escalating illumination, its beauty turning functionality inside out, making itself a more practical and useful presence than anything else in sight.”

LightRoomsObjectsColorSightPracticalsFirmIlluminationDrainedFunctionalityMatisseEscalating
Book:An Object of Beauty
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“Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the Present with the Past. Neither in countries without a Present nor in those without a Past is it to be encountered. Proust in Venice, Matisse's birdcages overlooking the flower market at Nice, Gide on the seventeenth-century quais of Toulon, Lorca in Granada, Picasso by Saint-Germain-des-Prés: there lies civilization and for me it can exist only under those liberal regimes in which the Present is alive and therefore capable of assimilating the Past.”

CountryPastLyingNiceAliveCenturyFlowerCivilizationCapableSaintActiveRegimesVeniceDepositsProustCombustionOverlookingMatisseLorcaGranada
Author:Cyril Connolly
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“Find a beautiful piece of art. If you fall in love with Van Gogh or Matisse or John Oliver Killens, or if you fall love with the music of Coltrane, the music of Aretha Franklin, or the music of Chopin - find some beautiful art and admire it, and realize that that was created by human beings just like you, no more human, no less.”

IfsHumansArtBeautifulFallRealizingHuman BeingsPiecesLike YouFalling In LoveAdmireVansFranklinColtraneBeautiful ArtMatisse
Author:Maya Angelou
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“Have not Manet and Monet, Cézanne and Matisse, rendered to painting something of the same service which Keats and Shelley gave to poetry after the solemn and ceremonious literary perfections of the eighteenth century? They have brought back to the pictorial art a new draught of joie de vivre; and the beauty of their work is instinct with gaiety, and floats in sparkling air. I do not expect these masters would particularly appreciate my defence, but I must avow an increasing attraction to their work.”

ArtAirCenturyPaintingMastersAppreciatePerfectionInstinctAttractionLeisureFloatsDefenceSolemnSparklingDraughtPictorialGaietyShelleyMonetMatisseJoie De Vivre
Author:Winston Churchill
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