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

Categorized in : Art House Light

The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.

Willem de Kooning

poverty trouble time

I have to change to stay the same.

Willem de Kooning

The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves.

Willem de Kooning

attitude art thinking

I paint the way I do because I can keep on putting more and more things in - like drama, pain, anger, love, a figure, a horse, my ideas of space. It doesn't matter if it differs from mine, as long as it comes from the painting, which has its own integrity and intensity.

Willem de Kooning

horse pain integrity

Every so often, a painter has to destroy painting. Cezanne did it, Picasso did it with Cubism. Then Pollock did it. He busted our idea of a picture all to hell. Then there could be new paintings again.

Willem de Kooning

cezanne painting ideas

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

peaceful art thinking

I'm not interested in 'abstracting' or taking things out or reducing painting to design, form, line, and color. I paint this way because I can keep putting more things in it - drama, anger, pain, love, a figure, a horse, my ideas about space. Through your eyes it again becomes an emotion or idea.

Willem de Kooning

horse pain drama

What you do when you paint, you take a brush full of paint, get paint on the picture, and you have faith.

Willem de Kooning

brushes paint have-faith

I don't paint to live, I live to paint.

Willem de Kooning

paint passion art

I might work on a painting for a month, but it has too look like I painted it in a minute.

Willem de Kooning

months might looks

The 'Women' had to do with the female painted through all ages, all those idols, and maybe I was stuck to a certain extent; I couldn't go on. It did one thing for me: it eliminated composition, arrangement, relationships, light - all this silly talk about line, colour and form - because that was the thing I wanted to get hold of.

Willem de Kooning

light idols silly

Whatever an artist's personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical. He acts from or upon other artists. An artist is someone who makes art too. He did not invent it. How it started — "to hell with it." It is obvious that it has no progress. The idea of space is given him to change if he can. The subject matter in the abstract is space. He fills it with an attitude. The attitude never comes from himself alone.

Willem de Kooning

space artist attitude

It's really absurd to make... a human image, with paint, today, when you think about it... But then all of a sudden, it was even more absurd not to do it.

Willem de Kooning

portraiture today thinking

The drawings that interest me most are made with closed eyes. With eyes closed, I feel my hand slide down on the paper. I have an image in mind, but the results always surprise me.

Willem de Kooning

drawing eye hands

Whatever an artist's personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical. He acts from or upon other artists.

Willem de Kooning

historical feelings art

Content is a glimpse of something, an encounter like a flash. It's very tiny - very tiny. Content.

Willem de Kooning

tiny glimpse encounters

Style is a fraud. I always felt the Greeks were hiding behind their columns.

Willem de Kooning

hype style greek

The past does not influence me; I influence it.

Willem de Kooning

motivational inspirational past

Not even for a million dollars would I paint a tree.

Willem de Kooning

dollars paint tree

Spiritually I am wherever my spirit allows me to be, and that is not necessarily in the future... Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure.

Willem de Kooning

peaceful spirit art