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A young man who is unable to commit a folly is already an old man.
Paul Gauguin -
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.
Paul Gauguin
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How to re-light the fire the very ashes of which are scattered?
Paul Gauguin -
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.
Paul Gauguin -
Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams.
Paul Gauguin -
It is useless to advise solitude for everyone; one must be strong enough to endure it and to work alone.
Paul Gauguin -
Painting is the most beautiful of all arts. In it, all sensations are condensed, at its aspect everyone may create romance at the will of his imagination, and at a glance have his soul invaded by the most profound memories, no efforts of memory, everything summed up in one moment. Complete art which sums up all the others and completes them.
Paul Gauguin -
Today one can dare anything, and, furthermore, nobody is surprised.
Paul Gauguin
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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.
Paul Gauguin -
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.
Paul Gauguin -
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.
Paul Gauguin -
Poor artist! You gave away part of your soul when you painted the picture which you are now trying to dispose of.
Paul Gauguin -
Follow the masters! But why should one follow them? The only reason they are masters is that they didn't follow anybody!
Paul Gauguin -
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.
Paul Gauguin
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Why did I hesitate to put all this glory of the sun on my canvas?
Paul Gauguin -
Seek art and abstraction in nature by dreaming in the presence of it.
Paul Gauguin -
A bit of advice, don't copy nature too closely. Art is an abstraction; as you dream amid nature, extrapolate art from it, and concentrate on what you will create as a result.
Paul Gauguin -
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.
Paul Gauguin -
With practice the craft will come almost of itself, in spite of you and all the more easitly if you think of something besides technique.
Paul Gauguin -
My God! How terrible these money questions are for an artist!
Paul Gauguin
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Night is here. All is at rest. My eyes close in order to see without actually understanding the dream that flees before men infinite space; and I experience the languorous sensation produced by the mournful procession of my hopes.
Paul Gauguin -
No one wants my painting because it is different from other people's peculiar, crazy public that demands the greatest possible degree of originality on the painter's part and yet won't accept him unless his work resembles that of the others!
Paul Gauguin -
The public wants to understand and learn in a single day, a single minute, what the artist has spent years learning.
Paul Gauguin -
Silence! I am learning to know the silence of a Tahitian night.
Paul Gauguin