Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure. I always seem to be wrapped in the melodrama of vulgarity. I do not think... of art as a situation of comfort. Willem de Kooning More Quotes by Willem de Kooning More Quotes From Willem de Kooning If you're an artist, the problem is to make a picture work whether you are happy or not. Willem de Kooning problem artist happiness I think I'm painting a picture of two women but it may turn out to be a landscape. Willem de Kooning landscape two thinking The idea of space is given to the artist to change if he can. The subject matter in the abstract is space. Willem de Kooning space artist ideas I make pictures and someone comes in and calls it art. Willem de Kooning art The texture of experience is prior to everything else. Willem de Kooning texture When, about fifteen years ago, I walked into Arshile's studio for the first time, the atmosphere was so beautiful that I got a little dizzy and when I came to, I was bright enough to take the hint immediately. If the bookkeepers think it necessary to make sure of where things and people came from, well then, I came from 36 Union Square. I am glad that it is about impossible to get away from his powerful influence. Willem de Kooning powerful beautiful thinking Maybe in that earlier phase I was painting the woman in me. Art isn't a wholly masculine occupation, you know. Willem de Kooning phases occupation art An artist is forced by others to paint out of his own free will. Willem de Kooning free-will artist art Content is a glimpse. Willem de Kooning awe glimpse vision You have to keep on the very edge of something, all the time, or the picture dies. Willem de Kooning dies edges Yes, I am influenced by everbody. But every time I put my hands in my pockets I find someone else's fingers there. Willem de Kooning fingers pockets hands The point they (Lissitzky, Rodchenko, Tatlin, Gabo, the neo-Plasticists, and so on) all had in common was to be inside and outside at the same time. For me, to be inside and outside is to be in an unheated studio with broken windows in the winter, or taking a nap on somebody's porch in the summer. Willem de Kooning naps summer winter Even an abstract form has to have a likeness. Willem de Kooning abstraction abstract form Once, after finishing a picture, I thought I would stop for awhile, take a trip, do things-the next time I thought of this, I found five years had gone by. Willem de Kooning finishing years art I see the canvas and I begin... It's a necessary evil to get into the work, and it's pretty marvelous to be able to get out of it. Willem de Kooning canvas able evil If you pick up some paint with your brush and make somebody's nose with it, this is rather ridiculous when you think of it, theoretically or philosophically. It's really absurd to make an image, like a human image, with paint, today. Willem de Kooning noses today thinking The word 'abstract' comes from the light tower of the philosophers. One of their spotlights that they have particularly focused on 'Art'. [Abstraction was] not so much what you could paint but rather what you could not paint. You could not paint a house or a tree or a mountain. It was then that subject matter came into existence as something you ought not have. Willem de Kooning light house art An artist is someone who makes art... He didn't invent it. Willem de Kooning artist art In art, one idea is as good as another. If one takes the idea of trembling, for instance, all of a sudden most art starts to tremble. Michelangelo starts to tremble. El Greco starts to tremble. All the Impressionists start to tremble. Willem de Kooning trembling ideas art I feel sometimes an American artist must feel, like a baseball player or something - a member of a team writing American history. Willem de Kooning team baseball writing
