Artisms

//THIS IS WHERE THE RIGHT PANEL IMAGE LINKS BEGIN //ARTISM

Art- the conscious use of skill and creative imagination, especially in the production of aesthetic objects.

ism- a distinctive doctrine, cause, or theory.

Merriam-Webster OnLine

//MODERNISM

"In sharp contrast to traditional art, modern art does not hide the fact that it is something made and produced: on the contrary, it underscores the fact."
Theodor W. Adorno

//MODERNISM 1863-1930, POST IMPRESSIONISM 2

"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

//MODERNISM 1863-1930, POST IMPRESSIONISM 1

"In our time there are many artists who do something because it is new; they see their value and their justification in this newness. They are deceiving themselves; novelty is seldom the essential. This has to do with one thing only; making a subject better from its intrinsic nature.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

//POINTILLISM

"Some say they see Poetry in my paintings; I see only science."
Georges Seurat

//PAUL SIGNAC

"The anarchist painter is not the one who will create anarchist pictures, but the one who will fight with all his individuality against official conventions."

//GEORGES SEURAT

"Let's go and get drunk on light again - it has the power to console."

"Harmony is the analogy of contrary and similar elements of tone, of color, and of line, conditioned by the dominant key, and under the influence of a particular light, in gay, calm, or sad combinations."

"They see poetry in what I have done. No. I apply my methods, and that is all there is to it."

//SYMBOLISM

"All art is at once surface and symbol.
Oscar Wilde

"The Artist submits from day to day to the fatal rhythm of the impulses of the universal world which encloses him, continual centre of sensations, always pliant, hypnotized by the marvels of nature which he loves, he scrutinizes. His eyes, like his soul, are in perpetual communion with the most fortuitous of phenomena."
Odilon Redon

//PIERRE PUVIS DE CHAVANNES

"The true role of painting is to animate walls. Apart from that, one should never create paintings larger than one's hand."

//GUSTAVE MOREAU

"Moreau's figures are ambiguous; it is hardly possible to distinguish at the first glance which of two lovers is the man, which the woman; all his characters are linked by subtle bonds of relationship... lovers look as though they were related, brothers as though they were lovers, men have the faces of virgins, virgins the faces of youths; the symbols of Good and Evil are entwined and equivocally confused."
Mario Praz

//ODILON REDON

"My originality consists in putting the logic of the visible to the service of the invisible."

"While I recognize the necessity for a basis of observed reality... true art lies in a reality that is felt."

"A painter is not intellectual when having painted a nude woman, he leaves in our minds the idea that she is going to get dressed again right away."

"It is precisely from the regret left by the imperfect work that the next one can be born."

//RUSSIAN SYMBOLISM //MIKHAIL NESTEROV

//MIKHAIL VRUBEL

//PAUL CEZANNE

"The transposition that a painter makes with an original vision gives to the representation of nature a new interest."

"Whoever the master is whom you prefer, this must only be a directive for you. Otherwise you will never be anything but an imitator."

"There is no such thing as an amateur artist as different from a professional artist. There is only good art and bad art."

"Taste is the best judge. It is rare. Art only addresses itself to an excessively small number of individuals."

//VINCENT VAN GOGH

"I am always hoping to make a discovery here, to express the feelings of two lovers by a marriage of two complementary colors, their minglings and their oppositions, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones."

"My great longing is to make those very incorrectnesses, those deviations, remodellings, changes in reality, so that they may become, yes, lies if you like - but truer than the literal truth."

"Color in a picture is like enthusiasm in life."

//HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC

"Bonnat tells me: "Your painting isn't bad, it is 'chic,' but even so it isn't bad, but your drawing is absolutely atrocious." So I must gather my courage and start once again..."

"Of course one should not drink much, but often."

"A professional model is like a stuffed owl. These girls are alive."
[on women in the brothel]

//SUZANNE VALADON

"That she-devil ... what talent she has."
[Edgar Degas on Suzanne Valadon]

"Valadon is the only artist there has ever been who can be said to have sampled--intimately--life on both sides of the easel."
[art critic Waldemar Januszczak on Suzanne Valadon]

//MODERNISM 1863-1930, IMPRESSIONISM

"The job of the impressionist painter is to say just enough without forcing the story on the viewer - detail kills the imagination."
Colley Whisson

"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

//AMERICAN IMPRESSIONISM

"Some day some of you will become painters, and a few of you will do distinguished work, and then the American public will turn you down for second rate French painters."
John H. Twachtman

"The first sight of Degas' pictures was the turning point of my artistic life."

"I have touched with a sense of art some people - they felt the love and the life. Can you offer me anything to compare to that joy for an artist?"

"If painting is no longer needed, it seems a pity that some of us are born into the world with such a passion for line and color."

"The true impressionism is realism. So many people do not observe. They take the ready-made axioms laid down by others, and walk blindly in a rut without trying to see for themselves."

"Art, to me, is the interpretation of the impression which nature makes upon the eye and brain."

"I don't believe in making pencil sketches and then painting a landscape in your studio. You must be right under the sky. You must try to match your colors as nearly as you can to those you see before you, and you must study the effects of light and shade on nature's own hues and tints."

"A cloudy sky to make it mysterious and a fog to increase the mystery. Just imagine how suggestive things are..."

"His works were...strong, and at the same time delicate even to evasiveness."
[Childe Hassam on Twachtman]

"Tonalists tried to capture both a mood in nature and their own mood as it was affected by nature."
Matthew Baigell

"My conception of a great picture is one that has the enthusiasm, the vigour, and the spontaneity of a sketch, with the ripeness of thought and colour, together with the subtlety that only comes from much labour."

"The purpose of the artist is to see beautifully."

"Paint should not be applied thick. It should be like a breath on the surface of a pane of glass."

"As far as painting is concerned there is only Degas and myself."

"If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this."

"Mauve? Mauve is just pink trying to be purple."

"The greatness of art is not in the display of knowledge, or in material accuracy, but in the distinctness with which it conveys the impressions of a personal vital force, that acts spontaneously, without fear or hesitation."

"We are all the subjects of impressions, and some of us seek to convey the impressions to others. In the art of communicating impressions lies the power of generalizing without losing the logical connection of parts to the whole which satisfies the mind."

"Beauty depends upon the unseen."

"Impression...I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it...and what freedom, what workmanship! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape."
[1874 criticism of Claude Monet's painting "Impression Sunrise"]
Louis Leroy, 1874

"If one wishes to characterize and explain them with a single word, then one would have to coin the word impressionists. They are impressionists in that they do not render a landscape, but the sensation produced by the landscape. The word itself has passed into their language: in the catalogue the Sunrise by Monet is called not landscape, but impression."
Jules-Antoine Castagnary, 1874

"There are no lines in nature, only areas of colour, one against another."

"You're on very good terms with Renoir and take an interest in his future - do advise him to give up painting! You can see for yourself that it's not his metier at all."
[note to Claude Monet]

"This woman's work is exceptional! Too bad she's not a man."
[on the artwork of Berthe Morisot]

"They call me the painter of dancers. They don't understand that the dancer has been for me a pretext for painting pretty fabrics and for rendering movement."

"A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness, some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain you end up boring people."

"I don't admit that a woman draws that well!"
[on Mary Cassatt]

"Damn, and just when I was starting to get it!"
[on his deathbed]

"I was asked to give a title for the catalogue; I couldn't very well call it a view of Le Havre. So I said: 'Put Impression.' Indeed, the painting was catalogued as Impression, Sunrise."

"For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at any moment."

"When you go out to paint try to forget what object you have before you - a tree, a house, a field or whatever. Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact colour and shape, until it emerges as your own na�ve impression of the scene before you."

"It's enough to drive you crazy, trying to depict the weather, the atmosphere, the ambience."

"Why shouldn't art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world."

"I never think I have finished a nude until I think I could pinch it."

"I've known painters who never did any good work because instead of painting their models they seduced them."

"Without him I would have given up."
[on Claude Monet]

"Photography freed painting from a lot of tiresome chores, starting with family portraits."

"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."

"It is important to express oneself...provided the feelings are real and are taken from your own experience."

"Real painters understand with a brush in their hand."

"Work at the same time on sky, water, branches, ground, keeping everything going on an equal basis... Don't be afraid of putting on colour... Paint generously and unhesitatingly, for it is best not to lose the first impression."

"He was such a professor that he could have taught stones to draw correctly."
[Mary Cassatt on Pissarro]