My heart beats more for a raw, average vulgar art, which doesn't live between sleepy fairy-tale moods and poetry but rather concedes a direct entrance to the fearful, commonplace, splendid and the average grotesque banality in life.
Max BeckmannRead
I believe that the reason why I love painting so much is that it forces one to be objective. There is nothing I hate more than sentimentality.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the objectivity of painting as an antidote to emotional excess.
Max Beckmann expresses his deep appreciation for painting as it compels the artist to approach their work with a level of objectivity, distancing oneself from sentimental feelings. He contrasts this artistic discipline with his aversion to sentimentality, suggesting that true artistic expression should be grounded in clarity and authenticity rather than emotional overindulgence.
In practice
During an art lecture, to illustrate the importance of objectivity in artistic expression.
My heart beats more for a raw, average vulgar art, which doesn't live between sleepy fairy-tale moods and poetry but rather concedes a direct entrance to the fearful, commonplace, splendid and the average grotesque banality in life.
I hardly need to abstract things, for each object is unreal enough already, so unreal that I can only make it real by means of painting.
I am seeking for the bridge which leans from the visible to the invisible through reality.
A painting to me is primarily a verb, not a noun, an event first and only secondarily an image.
If writers just sit and talk about oppression, they are not going to do much writing.
Artists teach critics what to think. Critics repeat what the artists teach them.
Form is, in a way, death. A novelist's obligation is to break free from the form, even though he knows that this will also be seen as artificial and distanced from life.
Yes, I've always been fashion conscious.
I am trying to make art that relates to the deepest and most mythic concerns of human kind and I believe that, at this moment of history, feminism is humanism.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.