I've been forty years discovering that the queen of all colors is black.
Henri MatisseRead
The essential thing is to work in a state of mind that approaches prayer.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of a mindful and spiritual approach to work, akin to prayer.
Henri Matisse suggests that when we engage in our work, we should do so with a mindset that mirrors the reverence and focus associated with prayer. This notion encourages us to approach our creative or professional endeavors with intention, mindfulness, and a deeper connection to our purpose, making the work itself a form of spiritual expression.
In practice
In a speech at an art gallery opening, one could emphasize the importance of approaching creative work like Matisse suggests.
I've been forty years discovering that the queen of all colors is black.
Whoever wishes to devote himself to painting should begin by cutting out his own tongue
Purer colors... have in themselves, independently of the objects they serve to express, a significant action on the feelings of those who look at them.
It is not enough to place colors, however beautiful, one beside the other; colors must also react on one another. Otherwise, you have cacophony.
Color, even more than drawing, is a means of liberation.
Don't try to be original. Be simple. Be good technically, and if there is something in you, it will come out.
Paris was a universe whole and entire unto herself, hollowed and fashioned by history; so she seemed in this age of Napoleon III with her towering buildings, her massive cathedrals, her grand boulevards and ancient winding medieval streets - as vast and indestructible as nature itself.
I'm trying to figure out if I love art enough to be poor.
Flowers construct the most charming geometries: circles like the sun, ovals, cones, curlicues and a variety of triangular eccentricities, which when viewed with the eye of a magnifying glass seem a Lilliputian frieze of psychedelic silhouettes.
I mean by a picture a beautiful romantic dream of something that never was, never will be - in a light better than any light that ever shone - in a land no one can define, or remember, only desire
One never knows what one is going to do. One starts a painting and then it becomes something quite different.
I consider music like a mirage in the desert. You're obsessed with the ideal piece of music, and the more you think you're getting closer, it's not there.
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