Unless one says goodbye to what one loves, and unless one travels to completely new territories, one can expect merely a long wearing away of oneself….

Art is a language, an instrument of knowledge, an instrument of communication..

Art addresses itself to the mind, and not to the eyes. It has always been considered in this way by primitive peoples, and they are right..

A work of art is only of interest, in my opinion, when it is an immediate and direct projection of what is happening in the depth of a person's being….

Art must make you laugh a little and make you a little afraid. Anything as long as it doesn't bore..

What seems interesting to me is to reproduce in the figurative representation of an object the whole complex system of impressions we receive in the ….

Man's need for art is absolutely primordial, as strong as, and perhaps stronger than, our need for bread. Without bread, we die of hunger, but withou….

(Jean) Fautrier's exhibition (in Paris 1945,fh) made an extremely strong impression on me. Art had never before appeared so fully realised in its pur….

I had given up ( around 1950, fh) any ambition of making a career as an artist…..I had lost all interest in the art shown in galleries and museums, a….

The State has but one face for me: that of the police. To my eyes, all of the State's ministries have this single face, and I cannot imagine the mini….

What I expect from any work of art is that it surprises me, that it violates my customary valuations of things and offers me other, unexpected ones..

Normal means lack of imagination and creativity..

I want my street to be crazy, I want my avenues, shops and buildings, to enter into a crazy dance, and this is why I deform and distort their outline….

Our culture is like a garment that does not fit us, or in any case no longer fits us. This culture is like a dead language that no longer has anythin….

I do not see in what way the face of a man should be a less interesting landscape than any other. A man, the physical person of a man, is a little wo….

There is no such thing as abstract art, or else all art is abstract, which amounts to the same thing. Abstract art no more exists than does curved ar….

Personally, I believe very much in values of savagery; I mean: instinct, passion, mood, violence, madness..

What interests me about thoughts is not the moment when it crystallises into formal ideas but its earlier stages..

Mud, rubbish and dirt are man's companions all his life; shouldn't they be precious to him, and isn't one doing man's service to remind him of their ….

With respect to the use of this sparkling coloured material (butterfly wings around 1955, fh) - the constituent parts of which remain indistinguishab….

I have tried to draw the human effigy (and all the other subjects dealt with in my paintings) in an immediate and effective way without any reference….