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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The greatest moment is when you realize that the painting you've just finished is nothing. When you manage to detach yourself from it.
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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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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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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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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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It was truly revealing. The strength of the intervention, the intensity of colors and the happiness of this work, has never left me.
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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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Artists don’t live in the everyday world. That’s why people think they’re an odd bunch.
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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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The most difficult thing is not to want anything.
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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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I'm trying to see, when everything in this world conspires to prevent us from seeing.
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Painting is so stupid, so simple. I paint to get out of the through. I paint my misery.
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There is only the present. A painting is an instant of time that has escaped oblivion.
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The more you know, the less you are.
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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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When I look back to a recent painting, I can hardly bear th suffering in it.
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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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The important thing is to be nothing.
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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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Each painting is linked to a fundamental drama.
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The less you think, the better it is.
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Painting doesn't interest me.. .What I paint is beyond painting.