Whoever wishes to devote himself to painting should begin by cutting out his own tongue
Henri MatisseRead
I've been forty years discovering that the queen of all colors is black.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the significance and depth of the color black in art and life.
Henri Matisse's quote highlights the profound realization that black is not just a color, but a fundamental aspect of artistic expression and experience. Through years of exploration, he has come to understand that black possesses a richness and complexity that can profoundly influence artistic creation and perception, symbolizing both the absence and presence of color.
In practice
In a lecture on color theory, you might use this quote to illustrate the importance of black in visual arts.
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.
Instinct must be thwarted just as one prunes the branches of a tree so that it will grow better.
This making studies and then taking them home to use them is only half right. You get composition, but you lose freshness; you miss the subtle and, to the artist, the finer characteristics of the scene itself.
If I were able to write, I probably would. But movies have given me a part of my life where I can express feelings and bring convictions to an audience as if I could write. So I made 'Gandhi' about human relations, prejudice and the empire. In 'Cry Freedom' I expressed my horror and disgust about apartheid.
Anything that's made by humans is about humans, whether it's about gods or aliens or anything; it's about some sort of expressive nature about us.
When Coleridge tried to define beauty, he returned always to one deep thought; beauty, he said, is unity in variety! Science is nothing else than the search to discover unity in the wild variety of nature,-or, more exactly, in the variety of our experience. Poetry, painting, the arts are the same search, in Coleridge's phrase, for unity in variety.
I always considered, with every shoot, I was on trial; every time I pick up my camera and start out on the relationship, I am at degree zero. There is no coasting.
It seems to me madness to wake up in the morning and do something other than paint, considering that one may not wake up the following morning.
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