Emil Nolde Quotes
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'The most perfect art was Greek art. Raphael is the greatest of all masters in painting'. Such were the doctrines of every art teacher only twenty or thirty years ago.
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A new day. Calm as seldom the beginning of such a one. Did I dream? No! Dream and contented pure was the night.. .It is the sure certainty of having found unity with nature, this calm causes one of the strongest experiences.Man, air, trees, world are laid bare and are one!Contented sleep releases the limbs. We await full moon. Await the dance!
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I had innumerable visions at that time c. 1903; wherever I looked, Nature was alive, the sky, the clouds, on every stone and among the branches of the trees, everywhere my creatures stirred and lived their still or wild, lively lives, arousing my excitement and crying out to be painted.
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If I were tied to the letter of the Scriptures and rigid dogma, I believe I could not have painted these profoundly felt paintings about the Eucharist and the 'Pentecost' religious paintings, he made c. 1909-11) I had to be artistically free - not have God before me. like a steely Assyrian ruler, but God in me, hot and holy like Christ's love.
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Art is exalted above religion and race. Not a single solitary soul these days believes in the religions of the Assyrians, the Egyptians and the Greeks... Only their art, whenever it was beautiful, stands proud and exalted, rising above all time.
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There is silver blue, sky blue and thunder blue. Every color holds within it a soul, which makes me happy or repels me, and which acts as a stimulus. To a person who has no art in him, colors are colors, tones tones.. ..and that is all. All their consequences for the human spirit, which range between heaven to hell, just go unnoticed.
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It the city Berlin stinks of perfume, they have water on their brains and they live as food for bacilli and shamelessly like dogs.
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When I was a child, eight or ten years old, I made a solemn promise to God that, when I grew up, I would write him a hymn for the prayer-book. The vow has never been fulfilled. But I have painted a large number of pictures, and there must be more than thirty religious ones. I wonder if they will do instead.
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In the working of wood and for the determining of its character I had had enough experience in my five-year pursuit of woodcutting. I also always gladly let the various charming grainings and sometimes the knots become involved in the printing.
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Clever people master life; the wise illuminate it and create fresh difficulties.
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They his own fantasies he made in strange pencil drawings then hover before me now in drifting color, more beautiful than I can possibly paint them.. ..I yearn for the day when I will have found my color harmonies, my harmonies.
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The art of an artist must be his own art. It is... always a continuous chain of little inventions, little technical discoveries of one's own, in one's relation to the tool, the material and the colors.
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Pictures are spiritual beings. The soul of the painter lives within them.
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I produce a form, an impression of light, a beauty of tones.. .The etchings are now full of life, an ecstasy, a dance, a gentle motion and fluctuation in tones.
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What an artist learns matters little. What he himself discovers has a real worth for him, and gives him the necessary incitement to work.
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Yellow can paint happiness and also pain.. .Every color harbors its soul within, delighting or repelling and inspiring me.
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Nobody had made the same full use of the properties of acids and metal in this way before. Having drown on the copper-plate and left areas of it bare, I laid it in the bath of acid and achieved effects that astonished even me, full of subtle nuances.
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Dualism is particularly important in both my paintings and my graphics.
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The artist need not know very much; best of all let him work instinctively and paint as naturally as he breathes or walks.
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It was in mid-summer 1906. The colors of the flowers attracted me irresistibly and almost sudden I was painting. My first small gardens paintings were born.