Paul Gauguin Quotes
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The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.
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Why work? The gods are there to lavish upon the faithful the good gifts of nature.
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In art one is concerned with the condition of the spirit for three quarters of the time; one must therefore care for oneself if he wishes to make something great and lasting.
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In order to produce something new, you have to return to the original source, to the childhood of mankind.
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Do you know what will soon be the ultimate in truth?
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A time will come when people will think I am a myth, or rather something the newspapers have made up.
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Let everything about you breathe the calm and peace of the soul.
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Do not copy nature. Art is an abstraction. Rather, bring your art forth by dreaming in front of her and think more of creation.
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Under the continual contact with the pebbles my feet have become hardened and used to the ground. My body, almost constantly nude, no longer suffers from the sun. Civilization is falling from me little by little. I am beginning to think simply, to feel only very little hatred for my neighbor - rather, to love him.
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The public wants to understand and learn in a single day, a single minute, what the artist has spent years learning.
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Poor artist! You gave away part of your soul when you painted the picture which you are now trying to dispose of.
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You may dream freely when you listen to music as well as when you look at painting. When you read a book you are the slave of the author's mind.
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Oh yes! he loved yellow, this good Vincent, this painter from Holland - those glimmers of sunlight rekindled his soul, that abhorred the fog, that needed the warmth.
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And here in my isolation I can grow stronger. Poetry seems to come of itself, without effort, and I need only let myself dream a little while painting to suggest it.
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Perhaps I have no talent, but all vanity aside - I do not believe that anyone makes an artistic attempt, no matter how small, without having a little - or there are many fools.
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My God! How terrible these money questions are for an artist!
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The work of a man is the explanation of the man.
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How to re-light the fire the very ashes of which are scattered?
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Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one's will. Virtue, good, evil are nothing but words, unless one takes them apart in order to build something with them; they do not win their true meaning until one knows how to apply them.
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Today one can dare anything, and, furthermore, nobody is surprised.
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It is better to paint from memory, for thus your work will be your own.
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Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams.
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I am a great artist and I know it. It's because of what I am that I have endured so much suffering, so as to pursue my vocation, otherwise I would consider myself a rogue - which is what many people think I am, for that matter.
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Beautiful colors exist, though we do not realize it, and are glimpsed behind the veil that modesty has drawn over them.