Pablo Picasso Quotes
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Art is not chaste. Those ill prepared should be allowed no contact with art. Art is dangerous. If it is chaste, it is not art.
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Everyone wants to understand art. Why don't we try to understand the song of a bird? Why do we love the night, the flowers, everything around us, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting, people think they have to understand.
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I treat paintings as I treat objects. If a window in a picture looks wrong, I close it and draw the curtains, just as I would do in my own room.
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"Picasso" is of Italian origin, as you know. And the name a person bears or adopts has its importance.
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Style is besides the point. Nobody would pay attention if one always said the same thing, in the same words and the same tone of voice.
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A painter paints to unload himself of feelings and visions.
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Art is not made to decorate rooms. It is an offensive weapon in the defense against the enemy.
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The artist spends the first part of his life with the dead, the second with the living, and the third with himself.
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The fingerprints of the god who amused himself fashioning them - I can see them on any bone whatsoever.
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Even if the painting is green, well then! The 'subject' is the green. There is always a subject; it's a joke to suppress the subject, it's impossible.
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The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.
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When you are young and without success, you have only a few friends. Then, later on, when you are rich and famous, you still have a few... if you are lucky.
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If I paint a hammer and sickle people may think it is a representation of Communism, but for me it is only a hammer and sickle. I just want to reproduce the objects for what they are, not for what they mean.
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In life you throw a ball. You hope it will reach a wall and bounce back so you can throw it again. You hope your friends will provide that wall.
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Because I cannot work except in solitude, it is necessary that I live my work and that is impossible except in solitude.
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Iimitate everyone except myself.
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And from the point of view of art there are no concrete or abstract forms, but only forms which are more or less convincing lies. That those lies are necessary to our mental selves is beyond any doubt, as it is through them that we form our aesthetic point of view of life. (Paris 1923)
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Motivation is in the world around us. We have an infinite amount of material at our disposal, in the lives of those we meet, in what we see and feel, in what we discuss and from the passion of every woman.
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The earth doesn't have a housekeeper to do the dusting. And the dust that falls on it every day remains there. Everything that's come down to us from the past has been conserved by dust.
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There is only one way to see things, until someone shows us how to look at them with different eyes.
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I who have been involved with all styles of painting can assure you that the only things that fluctuate are the waves of fashion which carry the snobs and speculators; the number of true connoisseurs remains more or less the same.
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You must always work not just within but below your means. If you can handle three elements, handle only two. If you can handle ten, then handle only five. In that way the ones you do handle, you handle with more ease, more mastery, and you create a feeling of strength in reserve.
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What a trade! Poor painters! They always wish to be understood, and they are analysed instead.
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When the individuality of the artist begins to express itself, what the artist gains in the way of liberty he loses in the way of order.