What I want to show in my work is the idea which hides itself behind so-called reality. Max Beckmann More Quotes by Max Beckmann More Quotes From Max Beckmann 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. Max Beckmann enough-alreadyrealmean I went across the fields to avoid the straight highways, along the firing lines where people were shooting at a small wooded hill, which is now covered with wooden crosses and lines of graves instead of spring flowers. Max Beckmann flowerspringpeople The world is rather shot to pieces [end of World War II - 1945], but the spectators climb out of their caves and pretend to have again become normal and customary humans who ask each other's pardon instead of eating one another or sucking each other's blood. The entertaining folly of war evaporates, distinguished boredom sits down again on the dignified old overstuffed chairs.. .May I report about myself that I have had a truly grotesque time, brim-full with work, Nazi persecutions, bombs, hunger, and again and again work - in spite of everything [a. o. using his bed sheets as canvas for the new paintings]. Max Beckmann boredomwarblood I think only of objects: of a leg or an arm, of the wonderful sense of foreshortening, breaking through the plane, of the division of space, of the combination of straight lines in relation to curved ones. Max Beckmann divisionspacethinking The individual representation of the object, treated sympathetically or antipathetically, is highly necessary and is an enrichment to the world in form. The elimination of the human relationship causes the vacuum which makes all of us suffer in various degrees - an individual alteration of the details of the object represented is necessary in order to display on the canvas the whole physicals reality. Max Beckmann sufferingorderreality I do not weep: I loathe tears, for they are a sign of slavery. Max Beckmann loatheslaverytears If you wish to get hold of the invisible you must penetrate as deeply as possible into the visible. Max Beckmann penetrateinvisiblewish Love in an animal sense is an illness, but a necessity which one has to overcome. Max Beckmann illnessovercominganimal It is, of course, a luxury to create art and, on top of this, to insist on expressing one's own artistic opinion. Nothing is more luxurious than this. It is a game and a good game, at least for me; one of the few games which make life, difficult and depressing as it is sometimes, a little more interesting. Max Beckmann luxurydepressingart Colour, as the strange and magnificent expression of the inscrutable spectrum of Eternity, is beautiful and important to me as a painter; I use it to enrich the canvas and to probe more deeply into the object. Colour also decided, to a certain extent, my spiritual outlook, but it is subordinated to life, and above all, to the treatment of form. Too much emphasis on colour at the expense of form and space would make a double manifestation of itself on the canvas, and this would verge on craft work. Max Beckmann expressionspiritualbeautiful There is nothing I hate more than sentimentality. Max Beckmann appetizersi-hatehate In principle, any abstraction of the object is allowed which has a sufficiently strong creative power behind it. Max Beckmann strongcreativeprinciples It was so wonderful outside that even the wild senselessness of this enormous death, whose music I hear again and again, could not disturb me from my great enjoyment! Max Beckmann enjoymentenormouswonderful All important things in art have always originated from the deepest feeling about the mystery of Being. Max Beckmann inspirationfeelingsart The metaphysics of substance. The strange feeling which comes over us when we sense: this is skin - this is bone - all in a single vision that is completely unearthly. The dreaminess of our existence mixed at the same time with the indescribably sweet illusion of reality. Max Beckmann feelingssweetreality Learn by heart the forms to be found in nature, so that you can use them like the notes in a musical composition. That is what these forms are for. Nature is a marvelous chaos, and it is our job and our duty to bring order into that chaos and - to perfect it. Max Beckmann heartjobsorder When spiritual, metaphysical, material, or immaterial events come into my life, I can only fix them by way of painting. Max Beckmann eventsspiritualhealing I am working here (in Amsterdam) on my last big triptych, which will be a tremendous story, and which gives me a more intense life and exhilaration. My God, life is worth living! Max Beckmann exhilarationlastsgiving Politics is a subordinate matter; its form of appearance constantly changes depending on the needs of the masses, the same way cocottes adjust to the needs of men by transforming and masking themselves. Because of that it is not fundamental. That is about what endures, what is unique, what is in the stream of illusions - what is eliminated from the workings of the shadows. Max Beckmann shadowuniquemen One of my problems is to find the self. Max Beckmann problemself
