Pablo Picasso on Art and Painting
Pablo Picasso: Do Not Seek - Find!
" In my opinion to search means nothing in painting. To find is the thing. Nobody is interested in following a man who, with his eyes fixed on the ground, spends his life looking for the pocket book that fortune should put in his path ..."
" The idea of research has often made painting go astray, and made the artist lose himself in mental lucubrations. Perhaps this has been the principal fault of modern art. The spirit of research has poisoned those who have not fully understood all the positive and conclusive elements in modern art and has made the attempt to paint the invisible and, therefore, the unpaintable. "
" They speak of naturalism in opposition to modern painting. I would like to know if anyone has ever seen a natural work of art. Nature and art, being two different things, cannot be the same thing. Through art we express our conception of what nature is not. "
" 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. "
Pablo Picasso: Art Does Not Evolve
" Art does not evolve by itself, the ideas of people change and with them their mode of expression. "
" The several manners I have used in my art must not be considered as an evolution, or as steps towards an unknown ideal of painting ... When I have found something to express, I have done it without thinking of the past or the future. "
Pablo Picasso: Cubism
" Many think that cubism is an art of transition, an experiment which is to bring ulterior results. Those who think that way have not understood it. Cubism is not either a seed or a fetus, but an art dealing primarily with forms, and when a form is realized it is there to live its own life ..."
" Cubism has kept itself within the limits and limitations of painting, never pretending to go beyond it. "
Pablo Picasso: A Picture is a Sum of Destructions
" Every day brought something new. A picture used to be a sum of additions. In my case a picture is a sum of destructions. I do a picture - then I destroy it. In the end, though, nothing is lost: the red I took away from on place turns up somewhere else."
Pablo Picasso: There is No Abstract Art
" There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterwards you can remove all traces of reality. There's no danger then, anyway, because the idea of the object will have left an indelible mark. It is what started the artist off, excited his ideas, and stirred up his emotions. Ideas and emotions will in the end be prisoners in his work ..."
" One cannot go against nature ... We may allow ourselves certain liberties, but only in details. "
" Nor is there any 'figurative' and 'non-figurative' art. Everything appears to us in the guise of a 'figure'. Even in metaphysics ideas are expressed by means of symbolic 'figure' ...See how ridiculous it is, then, to think of painting without 'figuration'. "
Pablo Picasso: The Painter Unloads His Feelings
" As soon as it is bought and hung on a wall, it takes on quite a different kind of significance, and the painting is done for. "
Pablo Picasso: Art is Not Made to Be Understood
" If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world, though we can't explain them. People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree. "
Source
Goldwater, R & Treves, M. 1976. Artists on Art, From the 14th to the 20th Century . John Murray.
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