I have always been haunted by the feeling that the painter has much to gain from making use of the forces that tend to work against his action..

When I want to draw a camel I no longer limit myself, as I once did, to looking only at camels..

In the name of what - except perhaps the coefficient of rarity - does man adorn himself with necklaces of shells and not spider's webs, with fox fur ….

Art doesn't go to sleep in the bed made for it. It would sooner run away than say its own name: what it likes is to be incognito. Its best moments ar….

I associated it (the word 'Hourloupe', as title of his longest series of work he made exclusively from 1962 to 1974, fh) by assonance with 'hurler' (….

(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….

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….

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

Normal means lack of imagination and creativity..

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….

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….

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….

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 ….

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

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….

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….

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