Thoughts, aphorisms, principles, ideas...
Several quotes included on this page come from
Jacqueline Lichtenstein's Les Raisons de l'Art, Gallimard.
"You should always get two ideas : one to kill the other."
Georges Braque
The paradox leads to reflection, meditation.
This is the opposite of pleonasm.
Etienne Klein, Conversations avec le Sphinx
A modern artist must take two-third of his time trying to see what is visible,
and especially not to see what is invisible.
Philosophers often expiate the fault of having practiced on the contrary.
Paul Valery
The aesthetic pleasure is indebted to a content of thought
(...) introduced by the observer.
Wundt cité par Marguerite Neveux in Le Nombre d'Or. Seuil.
The lack of rigor do not lead to freedom.
Commentary of J-Claude Casadessus. France-Info 2019
The act of creation is par excellence the emergence of the unexpected.
Jacques Thuillier
Art work becomes authentic only when playing with contradiction and disobey the evidence. Paradoxes are opponents to stationary regimes of the mind.
(Change "art work" into " intellectual fonction " to find
the authentic quote of Etienne Klein)
The secret is first to please and touch,
Invent the strings that can bind me.
Boileau
Criticism of the rules is always a revolt against obsolete rules that lost their raison d'être.
In art, one kills rules already dead, to replace them with others.
Jacqueline Lichtenstein
Le progrès, c'est ce vent qui souffle sur la plaine, agite les grands arbres, ploie les roseaux, fatigue les herbes, fait tourbillonner les sables, siffle dans les cavernes et désole le voyageur jusque sur la couche où il comptait trouver le repos.
Le progrès, ce continuel transport qui travaille la société toute entière, qui ne lui laisse ni trêve ni repos, ni bonheur. Derrière un progrès s'en trouve toujours un autre.
Partout la chose de demain corrompt à l'avance la chose d'aujourd'hui; le mieux qui n'arrive pas gâte le bien qui est sous la main.
Le progrès est là, avec son grand fouet, qui frappe sur le troupeau.
Rodolphe Töpffer
cité par J. Bouveresse dans Le Mythe Moderne du Progrès, éditions Agone
You become an artist at the moment you cheat for beautified.
Max Jacob
To draw what you see, forget what you know.
Betty Edwards
According to Bachelard, scientific reasoning and poetic imagination share three points :
- Wake up the mind
- Are not satisfied with early evidences
- Lead to rectified intuitions.
I like the rule that rectifies emotion.
Braque
Let's learn to criticize our own works at the sight of beauties we discover in those of others.
Antoine Coypel
On se débarrasse des intellectuels en les envoyant s'occuper un peu de l'émotion et de l'ineffable.
Barthes, cité dans le Petit Robert.
On se débarrasse des artistes de la même manière.
