Bram van Velde Quotes
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Each of my paintings is a cycle. It’s like existence, life. They are always in motion.. .If they were fixed and static, they would be false.
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Creating a painting is a matter of ensuring that all its parts achieve unity. Though it's a precarious, fragile unity.
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Through painting I try to get closer to nothingness, to the void.
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What the eye can see won't get us very far. And what it can see is so limited, so restricted. But a gouache or an oil painting can be seen at a glance, can take in a whole world at a single glance.
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When I look back to a recent painting, I can hardly bear th suffering in it.
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Van Gogh.. Fascinating. The fragility of that strong spirit.
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In this world that destroys me, the only thing that I can do is to live my weakness. That weakness is my only strength.
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I start off on the canvas and, little by little, it imposes its own solution. But that solution is not easy to find.
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The beauty other people create is not for the artists. Artists have to live alone.
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Mondrian? His mind was too subtle. He worked in the light. I work in the darkness.. .Mondrian is the Buddha of painting. I saw him once. You wondered how a man could radiate such charisma.
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To be true, you have to take the plunge, to touch bottom. But most people want to be in control. They fear the worst. You can’t control anything. What you have to do is let yourself be taken over.. .All the paintings I have made, I was compelled to make. You must never force yourself.
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I met Beckett at my brother’s place. That was a Big meeting, in capital letters. It was before war started, life was still normal. That time I was very lonely. We saw each other often. Before the war he had published already something, but his fame came in 1953. We never spoke about his work. He was a taciturn man. Sometimes a word escaped from his mouth. Sure, a word you would never forget. It would stick in your head... This friendship with Beckett is the most important experience in my life. He was fully alive for my way of working. What he could express in words, I did with my paintings.
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Of course painting is ridiculous. But it’s the only way I've got to get closer to life.
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Artists don’t live in the everyday world. That’s why people think they’re an odd bunch.
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Art is not for the personal satisfaction of one or the other, but art wants to return all what's in life... Art wants to give back everything what's in our lives. The more comprehensive the artist stands in life the more powerful his work will speak, and therefore a work of art is a measure of the mental size of his creator.
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There's a perpetual duel going on between the world of the spirit and the world of things. Although the one only has meaning in relation to the other.
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Painting is an aid to vision. It turns life, the complexity of life, into something visible. It reveals things that we don’t know how to see.
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The real horror is mass production. Painting when there is no compulsion to do so… …Pictures like that are all unpunished crimes.
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There is only the present. A painting is an instant of time that has escaped oblivion.
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Painting is so stupid, so simple. I paint to get out of the through. I paint my misery.