Paul Gauguin Quotes
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Why work? The gods are there to lavish upon the faithful the good gifts of nature.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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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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Many excellent cooks are spoilt by going into the arts.
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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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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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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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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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How to re-light the fire the very ashes of which are scattered?
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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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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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Today one can dare anything, and, furthermore, nobody is surprised.
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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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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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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!
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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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Follow the masters! But why should one follow them? The only reason they are masters is that they didn't follow anybody!
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The work of a man is the explanation of the man.
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Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams.
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My God! How terrible these money questions are for an artist!