Paul Gauguin Quotes
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Do not copy nature too much. Art is an abstraction.
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If instead of a figure you put the shadow only of a person, you have found an original starting point, that strangeness of which you have calculated.
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A hint - don't paint too much direct from nature. Art is an abstraction! study nature then brood on it and treasure the creation which will result, which is the only way to ascend towards God - to create like our Divine Master.
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Oh yes! He loved yellow, did good Vincent...When the two of us were together in Arles, both of us insane, and constantly at war over beautiful colors, I adored red; where could I find a perfect vermilion?
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Machines have come, art has fled, and I am far from thinking photography can help us.
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Look closely at the Japanese; they draw admirably and yet in them you will see life outdoors and in the sun without shadows.
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A meter of green is greener than a centimeter.
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The cyclone ends. The sun returns; the lofty coconut trees lift up their plumes again; man does likewise. The great anguish is over; joy has returned; the sea smiles like a child.
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for Christ's sake, were the mountains blue, then chuck on some blue and don't go telling me that it was a blue a bit like this or like that, it was blue wasn't it? Good - make them blue and that's enough!
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I sit at my door, smoking a cigarette and sipping my absinthe, and I enjoy every day without a care in the world
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Do not finish your work too much. An impression is not sufficiently durable for its first freshness to survive a belated search for infinite detail; in this way you let the lava grow cool.
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All the joys - animal and human - of a free life are mine. I have escaped everything that is artificial, conventional, customary.
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The landscape with its violent, pure colours dazzled and blinded me. I was always uncertain.
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Beware of luxury! Beware of acquiring the taste and need for it, under the pretext of providing for the morrow.
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I am leaving in order to have peace and quiet. To be rid of the influence of civilization. I only want to do simple, very simple art and to be able to do that, I have to immerse myself in virgin nature, see no one but savages, live their life, with no other thought in my mind but to render, the way a child would, the concepts formed in my brain and to do this with the aid of nothing but the primitive means of art, the only means that are good and true.
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Go on working, freely and furiously, you will make progress and sooner or later your worth will be recognised, if you have any.
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But I owe something to Vincent, and that is, in the consciousness of having been useful to him, the confirmation of my own original ideas about painting. And also, at difficult moments, the remembrance that one finds others unhappier than oneself.
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Stressing output is the key to improving productivity, while looking to increase activity can result in just the opposite.
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Proficiency in art is a contract with your self and the empowerment of your self. Not all of us demand or even desire proficiency, but for those who do it's necessary to temper the influence of groups. And while some artists think history is bunk, the historical evidence is overwhelming: "In my isolation I grow stronger."
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If I did what has already been done, I would be a plagiarist and would consider myself unworthy; so I do something different and people call me a scoundrel. I'd rather be a scoundrel than a plagiarist!
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Where do we come from? What are We? Where are we going?
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In art there are only two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists
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Sooner or later people will learn to recognize your worth
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Color which, like music, is a matter of vibrations, reaches what is most general and therefore most indefinable in nature: its inner power.