How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?
Vincent Van GoghRead
Occasionally, in times of worry, I've longed to be stylish, but on second thought I say no-just let me be myself-and express rough, yet true things with rough workmanship.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of authenticity over style, encouraging individuals to express themselves genuinely, even if it lacks polish.
In this quote, Vincent Van Gogh reflects on the tension between the desire for societal approval through style and the value of being true to oneself. He acknowledges moments of worry where he craved to be fashionable but ultimately chooses to embrace his authentic self, producing work that is honest and raw, even if it is not refined. This sentiment highlights the significance of personal expression in art and life over conforming to external expectations.
Themes
AuthenticitySelf-ExpressionArtStyleGenuineness
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can inspire artists at a gallery opening where they showcase their unique style.
More from Vincent Van Gogh
All quotes βDescribing Starry Night: Firmament and planets both disappeared, but the mighty breath which gives life to all things and in which all is bound up remained.
Vincent Van GoghRead
To express a marriage of two complementary colors, their mingling and their opposition, the mysterious vibrations of kindred tones.
Vincent Van GoghRead
Great things do not just happen by impulse, _x000D_ but as a succession of small things linked together.
Vincent Van GoghRead
The world concerns me only in so far as I have a certain debt and duty to it, because I have lived in it for thirty years and owe to it to leave behind some souvenir in the shape of drawings and paintings β not done to please any particular movement, but within which a genuine human sentiment is expressed.
Vincent Van GoghRead
To believe in God for me is to feel that there is a God, not a dead one, or a stuffed one, who with irresistible force urges us towards more loving.
Vincent Van GoghRead
Similar quotes
Pure drawing is an abstraction. Drawing and colour are not distinct, everything in nature is coloured.
Paul CezanneRead
I don't really consider myself an American filmmaker like, say, Ron Howard might be considered an American filmmaker. If I'm doing something and it seems to me to be reminiscent of an Italian giallo, I'm gonna to do it like an Italian giallo.
Quentin TarantinoRead
The perfection of art is to conceal art.
QuintilianRead
The Photograph is an extended, loaded evidence β as if it caricatured not the figure of what it represents (quite the converse) but its very existence ... The Photograph then becomes a bizarre (i)medium(i), a new form of hallucination: false on the level of perception, true on the level of time: a temporal hallucination, so to speak, a modest (o)shared(i) hallucination (on the one hand 'it is not there,' on the other 'but it has indeed been'): a mad image, chafed by reality.
Roland BarthesRead
What seems to me the highest and the most difficult achievement of Art is not to make us laugh or cry, or to rouse our lust or our anger, but to do as nature does-that is, fill us with wonderment.
Gustave FlaubertRead
No eyes that have seen beauty ever lose their sight.
Jean ToomerRead