Max Beckmann on Art and Painting

" Painting is a very difficult thing. It absorbs the whole man, body and soul - thus I have passed blindly many things which belong to real and political life ..."

" What I want to show in my work is the idea which hides itself behind so-called reality. I am seeking for the bridge which leads from the visible to the invisible ... "

" One of my problems is to find the ego, which has only one form, and is immortal - to find it in animals and men, in the heaven and in the hell which together form the world in which we live ..."

" The uniform application of a principle of form is what rules me in the imaginative alteration of an object. One thing is sure - we have to transform the three-dimensional world of objects into the two-dimensional world of the canvas. "

" If the canvas is filled only with a two-dimensional conception of space, we shall have applied art, or ornament. Certainly this may give us pleasure, though I myself find it boring as it does not give me enough visual sensation. To transform three into two dimensions is for me an experience full of magic in which I glimpse for a moment that fourth dimension which my whole being is seeking ..."

" Color, as the strange and magnificent expression of the inscrutable expression of eternity, is beautiful and important to me as a painter; I use it to enrich the canvas and to probe more deeply into the object. "

Source
Goldwater, R & Treves, M. 1976. Artists on Art, From the 14th to the 20th Century . John Murray.

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