Quote

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

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Max Beckmann
Age: 66 †
Born: 1884
Born: February 12
Died: 1950
Died: December 27
Draftsperson
Graphic Artist
Illustrator
Painter
Printmaker
Sculptor
University Teacher
Writer
Max Beckman
Max Carl Friedrich Beckmann
m. beckmann
Beckmann
Time
Strange
Substance
Vision
Skin
Existence
Skins
Dreaminess
Feeling
Bones
Indescribably
Comes
Illusion
Unearthly
Sense
Completely
Metaphysics
Feelings
Sweet
Bone
Reality
Single
Mixed

More quotes by Max Beckmann

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What I want to show in my work is the idea which hides itself behind so-called reality. I am seeking for the bridge which leans from the visible to the invisible through reality. It may sound paradoxical, but it is in fact reality which forms the mystery of our existence.
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All important things in art have always originated from the deepest feeling about the mystery of Being.
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My figures come and go, suggested by fortune or misfortune. I try to fix them divested of their apparent accidental quality.
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The greatest mystery of all is reality.
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If you wish to get hold of the invisible you must penetrate as deeply as possible into the visible.
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The laws of art are eternal and don't change at all, as the moral laws don't change in human beings.
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Space, and space again, is the infinite deity which surrounds us and in which we are ourselves contained.
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There is nothing I hate more than sentimentality.
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In principle, any abstraction of the object is allowed which has a sufficiently strong creative power behind it.
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As a painter, cursed or blessed with a terrible and vital sensuousness, I must look for wisdom with my eyes. I repeat, with my eyes, for nothing could be more ridiculous or irrelevant than a 'philosophical conception painted purely intellectually without the terrible fury of the senses grasping each visible form of beauty and ugliness.
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When spiritual, metaphysical, material, or immaterial events come into my life, I can only fix them by way of painting.
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I have never, God or whatever knows, prostrated myself to be famous, but I would meander through all the sewers of the world, through all degradations and humiliations, in order to paint. I have to do this. Until the last drop every vision that exists in my being must be purged then it will be a pleasure for me to be rid of this damned torture
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Art is creative for the sake of realization, not for amusement... for transfiguration, not for the sake of play.
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I am seeking for the bridge which leans from the visible to the invisible through reality.
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One of my problems is to find the self.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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What is important to me in my work is the identity that is hidden behind so-called reality. I search for a bridge from the given present tot the invisible, rather as a famous cabalist once said, 'If you wish to grasp the invisible, penetrate as deeply as possible into the visible'.
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What I want to show in my work is the idea which hides itself behind so-called reality.
Max Beckmann