Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it. Gustave Courbet More Quotes by Gustave Courbet More Quotes From Gustave Courbet Fine art is knowledge made visible. Gustave Courbet fine made art I have never seen either angels or goddesses, so I am not interested in painting them. Gustave Courbet goddess painting angel Painting is the representation of visible forms. The essence of realism is its negation of the ideal. Gustave Courbet transcendentalism artist essence I am fifty years old and I have always lived in freedom; let me end my life free; when I am dead let this be said of me: 'He belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any regime except the regime of liberty.' Gustave Courbet freedom church school Painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing things. It is a completely physical language, the words of which consist of all visible objects. An object which is abstract, not visible, non-existent, is not within the realm of painting. Gustave Courbet painting real art The principle of realism means denial of the ideal. Gustave Courbet denial principles mean Beauty lies in nature and reveals, once the artist has perceived it, its own expressive power. Gustave Courbet expressive artist lying To be able to translate the customs, ideas and appearance of my times as I see them - in a word, to create a living art - this has been my aim. Gustave Courbet able ideas art I hope to live all my life for my art, without abandoning my principles one iota, without . . . having painted as much as you can cover with your hand, to please somebody or in order to sell the picture more easily. Gustave Courbet order hands art I deny that art can be taught, or, in other words, maintain that art is completely individual, and that the talent of each artist is but the result of his own inspiration and his own study of past tradition. Gustave Courbet inspiration education art On the left is the realist tradition of the 19th century, with its impulse to social description, radical criticism and meditation on things as they are... culminating in Courbet at his mightiest (The Studio, The Funeral at Ornans and a portrait of a trout that has more death in it than Rubens could get in a whole Crucifixion). Gustave Courbet funeral criticism meditation When I am no longer controversial, I will no longer be important Gustave Courbet controversial important I have studied the art of the masters and the art of the moderns, avoiding any preconceived system and without prejudice. I have no more wanted to imitate the former than to copy the latter; nor have I thought of achieving the idle aim of art for art's sake. Gustave Courbet copying prejudice art Art or talent, for an artist, is merely a means of applying his personal faculties to the ideas and the things of the period in which he lives. Gustave Courbet mean ideas art I too am a government. Gustave Courbet independence government Art is a wholly physical language whose words are all the visible objects. Gustave Courbet visible language art It is fatal for art if it is forced into official respectability and condemned to sterile mediocrity. Gustave Courbet mediocrity ifs art The beautiful is in nature, and it is encountered under the most diverse forms of reality. Once it is found it belongs to art, or rather to the artist who discovers it. Gustave Courbet beautiful reality art I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom; I am one who is fond of olden times and intense in quest of the sacred knowing of the ancients. Gustave Courbet quests knowing artist Painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing things. Gustave Courbet painting real art
