Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul. — Henri Matisse
Impressionism means taking inspiration directly from nature, trusting your senses rather than what you think you know. — Michael McClure
No, mes amis, impressionism is not charlatanry, nor a formula, nor a school. I should say rather it is the bold resolve to throw all those things overboard. — Joaquin Sorolla
One morning, one of us ran out of the black, it was the birth of Impressionism. — Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Art, to me, is the interpretation of the impression which nature makes upon the eye and brain. — Childe Hassam
I didn't become an impressionist. As long as I can remember I always have been one. — Claude Monet
Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see. — Philip Guston
A picture is the expression of an impression. If the beautiful were not in us, how would we ever recognize it? — Ernst Haas
Painting is the representation of visible forms. The essence of realism is its negation of the ideal. — Gustave Courbet
A painter paints the appearance of things, not their objective correctness, in fact he creates new appearances of things. — Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Vision gives you the impulse to make the picture your own. — Robert Collier
The painter thinks in terms of form and color. The goal is not to be concerned with the reconstitution of an anecdotal fact, but with constitution of a pictorial fact. — Georges Braque
The most interesting painting is one that expresses more of what one thinks than of what one sees — Mark Rothko
It was in the 1920s, when nobody had time to reflect, that I saw a still-life painting with a flower that was perfectly exquisite, but so small you really could not appreciate it. — Georgia O'Keeffe
Short Impressionism Quotes
Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life. — Muriel Spark
A good impression is lost so quickly. — Claude Monet
My knowledge of art ended at impressionism. — Peggy Guggenheim
The true impressionism is realism. So many people do not observe. — Childe Hassam
Impressionism; it is the birth of Light in painting. — Robert Delaunay
Rock & roll is a type of sensuous music unfit for impressionable minds. — Tip O'Neill
I want to give colors intoxication, fullness, excitement, power by trying to forget Impressionism. — Paula Modersohn-Becker
A one woman cabaret of emotional impressionism — Alexander Polinsky
Abstract Expressionism Quotes
Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is. — Jackson Pollock
Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn't have any beginning or any end. He didn't mean it as a compliment, but it was. — Jackson Pollock
I was a student at Harvard, and that's where I learned about so-called avant-garde music. Jackson Pollock, abstract expressionism and painting were well known at this time. — Henry Flynt
I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism. — Don Delillo
The modern artist is working with space and time, and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating. — Jackson Pollock
Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. — Jackson Pollock
Abstract Expressionism - the first American movement to have a worldwide influence - was remarkably short-lived: It heated up after World War II and was all but done for by 1960 (although visit any art school today and you'll find a would-be Willem de Kooning). — Jerry Saltz
The big shock of my life was Abstract Expressionism - Pollock, de Kooning, those guys. It changed my work. I was an academically trained student, and suddenly you could pour paint, smear it on, broom it on! — LeRoy Neiman
I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. — Jackson Pollock
But no one, when you stop to think, has ever equated abstract expressionism as a movement with jazz music. It's based on improvisation. The rhythms, the personal involvement, all of this is part of the jazz experience. — Romare Bearden
Cubism Quotes
When we discovered cubism, we did not have the aim of discovering cubism. We only wanted to express what was in us. — Pablo Picasso
Most people don't do something seminal. I've done it twice: with my tent and my bed. Picasso did it with Cubism. — Tracey Emin
Every so often, a painter has to destroy painting. Cezanne did it, Picasso did it with Cubism. Then Pollock did it. He busted our idea of a picture all to hell. Then there could be new paintings again. — Willem de Kooning
Cubism is not a reality you can take in your hand. It's more like a perfume, in front of you, behind you, to the sides, the scent is everywhere but you don’t quite know where it comes from. — Pablo Picasso
People want to find a 'meaning' in everything and everyone. That's the disease of our age... — Pablo Picasso
Cubism is like standing at a certain point on a mountain and looking around. If you go higher, things will look different; if you go lower, again they will look different. It is a point of view. — Jacques Lipchitz
Cubism is not a manner but an aesthetic, and even a state of mind; it is therefore inevitably connected with every manifestation of contemporary thought. It is possible to invent a technique or a manner independently, but one cannot invent the whole complexity of a state of mind. — Juan Gris
Cubism is the art of depicting new wholes with formal elements borrowed not only from the reality of vision, but from that of conception. — Guillaume Apollinaire
As we do not see squares in nature, I thought that it is man-made. But I have corrected myself. Because squares exist in salt crystals, our daily salt. — Josef Albers
I don't say everything, but I paint everything. — Pablo Picasso
To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty, yes pretty! There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them. — Pierre-Auguste Renoir
There is a young and impressionable mind out there that is hungry for information. It has latched on to an electronic tube as its main source of nourishment. — Joan Ganz Cooney
The writers who have the deepest influence on one are those one reads in ones more impressionable, early life, and often it is the more youthful works of those writers that leave the deepest imprint. — J. M. Coetzee
The most authentic Russian Impressionism leaves one perplexed if one compares it with Monet and Pissarro. Here, in the Louvre, before the canvases of Manet, Millet and others, I understood why my alliance with Russia and Russian art did not take root. — Marc Chagall
For children in their most impressionable years, there is, in fantasy, the highest of stimulating and educational powers. — Arthur Rackham
In our relationship with children and young people, we are not dealing with mechanical devices that can be quickly repaired, but with living beings who are impressionable, volatile, sensitive, afraid, affectionate; and to deal with them we have to have great understanding, the strength of patience and love. — Jiddu Krishnamurti
It isn't an easy job to paint oneself - at any rate if it is to be different from a photograph. And you see - this, in my opinion, is the advantage that impressionism possesses over all the other things; it is not banal, and one seeks after a deeper resemblance than the photograph. — Vincent Van Gogh
I don't want ISIS using our Internet to take our young, impressionable youth and watching the media talking about how they're masterminds - these are masterminds. They shouldn't be using the word "mastermind." — Donald Trump
On the other hand, the artist has much to do in the realm of color construction, which is so little explored and so obscure, and hardly dates back any farther than to the beginning of Impressionism. — Robert Delaunay
All inspired painters are impressionists, even though it be true that some impressionists are not inspired. — Joaquin Sorolla
What I am after is the first impression - I want to show all one sees on first entering the room - what my eye takes in at first glance. — Pierre Bonnard
The word 'impressionism' as applied to art has been abused, and in the general acceptance of the term has become perverted. — Childe Hassam
Impressionism came about because it suddenly became apparent that pure colours mix in the eye in a more dazzling way than they have ever been mixed in paint. — Joseph Plaskett
Impressionism is only direct sensation. All great painters were less or more impressionists. It is mainly a question of instinct, and much simpler than [John Singer] Sargent thinks. — Claude Monet
It took some time before the public learned that to appreciate an Impressionist painting one has to step back a few yards, and enjoy the miracle of seeing these puzzling patches suddenly fall into one place and come to life before our eyes. — Ernst Gombrich
I think I will always feel a special relationship with The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, because for me it was something very, very special. It was a modern opera, and to play the heroine in a film that became such a success at a young age, and learning from him when I was so young and impressionable - really it was one of my most important experiences. — Catherine Deneuve
Impressions are like pearls; ideas are like the string that turns the pearls into a necklace. The string is invisible, but it is not dispensable and cannot be broken. — Mu Xin
About 1883 something like a break occurred in my work. I had reached the end of 'impressionism,' and I had come to realize that I did not know how to paint or draw. — Pierre-Auguste Renoir
The habit of breaking up one's colour to make it brilliant dates from further back than Impressionism - Couture advocates it in a little book called 'Causeries d'Atelier' written about 1860 - it is part of the technique of Impressionism but used for quite a different reason. — John Singer Sargent
A person with normal eyesight would have nothing to know in the way of 'Impressionism' unless he were in a blinding light or in the dusk or dark. — John Singer Sargent
I didn't have any aspirations of becoming famous or successful; in fact I was scared to death of all that. I remember somebody once said that if a rock musician goes on tour, he goes insane. I was very impressionable and I carried this useless weight of fear around with me about going on tour, all because of this thing somebody said. — Steve Vai
I like to think that I'm a really strong, tough person, but I'm not. I'm a very, very needy person. I'm very insecure. I'm very impressionable. But, there is a side of me that is very put-together, very strong, very capable and very opinionated. It's the two sides of myself. — Katee Sackhoff
Sometimes I will look away very quickly, and freeze frame that first impression, pleased with myself that I have outsmarted my own smartness, and perceived a colour as it actually is. — Catherine Taylor
After 1909, Monet drastically enlarged his brushstrokes, disintegrated his images, and broke through the taming constraints and delicacy of Impressionism for good. Nineteen gnarly paintings, starting in 1909 and carrying through his final seventeen years, finish off the notion that Monet went happily ever after into lily-land. — Jerry Saltz
In the work of Seurat, you can see the dots of neutral colors carrying the form and then the dots of more intense color that make the color texture. It is a totally different principle that than of the Impressionists who used broken color to imitate visual effect. — John French Sloan
What to paint was a problem for the war artist... the old heroics, the death and glory stuff, were gone forever... the impressionistic technique I had developed was now ineffective, for visual impressions were not enough. — A. Y. Jackson
Painting took on a fabulous strength and splendor; the object was discredited as an indispensable element of the picture. — Wassily Kandinsky
Impressionism' was the name given to a certain form of observation when Monet, not content with using his eyes to see what things were or what they looked like as everybody had done before him, turned his attention to noting what took place on his own retina (as an oculist would test his own vision). — John Singer Sargent
There are a great many of these accusers, and they have been accusing me now for a great many years, and what is more, they approached you at the most impressionable age, when some of you were children or adolescents; and literally won their case by default, because there was no one to defend me. — Socrates
Pictures aren't made out of doctrines. Since the appearance of impressionism, the official salons, which used to be brown, have become blue, green, and red...But peppermint or chocolate, they are still confections. — Claude Monet
A young painter who cannot liberate himself from the influence of past generations is digging his own grave. — Henri Matisse
America does not concern itself now with Impressionism. We own no involved philosophy. The psyche of the land is to be found in its movement. It is to be felt as a dramatic force of energy and vitality. We move; we do not stand still. We have not yet arrived at the stock-taking stage. — Martha Graham
In Conclusion
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