Fairfield Porter Quotes

United States, Artist
June 10, 1907 – September, 18, 1975.

Fairfield Porter (June 10, 1907 – September 18, 1975) was an American painter and art critic. He was the fourth of five children of James Porter, an architect, and Ruth Furness Porter, a poet from a literary family. He was the brother of photographer Eliot Porter and the brother-in-law of federal Reclamation Commissioner Michael W. Straus.

Order seems to come from searching for disorder, and awkwardness from searching for harmony or likeness, or the following of a system. The truest order is what you already find there, or that will be given if you don't try for it. When you arrange, you fail.

Fairfield Porter
The profoundest order is revealed in what is most casual.

Fairfield Porter

There is that elementary principle of organization in any art that nothing gets in anything else's way, and everything is at its own limit of possibilities.

Fairfield Porter
- Art
- Organization
If you are vain it is vain to sign your pictures and vain not to sign them. If you are not vain it is not vain to sign them and not vain not to sign them.

Fairfield Porter
The right use of color can make any composition work.

Fairfield Porter
- Work
- Color
I was never one to paint space, I paint air.

Fairfield Porter
- Space
- Air
Subject matter must be normal in the sense that it does not appear sought after so much as simply happening to one.

Fairfield Porter