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There is only one reason for art in America, and that is that the people of America learn the means of expressing themselves in their own time, and their own land.

Robert Henri

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Robert Henri
Age: 64 †
Born: 1865
Born: June 24
Died: 1929
Died: July 12
Artist
Painter
Cincinnati
Ohio
Robert Earle Henri
Robert Henry Cozad
Robert Earl Henri
Henri
Robert Cozad Henri
Learn
Means
Art
America
Reason
Mean
Time
Expressing
People
Land

More quotes by Robert Henri

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Don't worry about the rejections. Everybody that's good has gone through it. Don't let it matter if your works are not accepted at once. The better or more personal you are the less likely they are of acceptance.
Robert Henri
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Don't worry about your originality. You couldn't get rid of it even if you wanted to. It will stick with you and show up for better or worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do.
Robert Henri
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Pretend you are dancing or singing a picture. A worker or painter should enjoy his work, else the observer will not enjoy it.
Robert Henri
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An artist must first of all respond to his subject, he must be filled with emotion toward that subject and then he must make his technique so sincere, so translucent that it may be forgotten, the value of the subject shining through it.
Robert Henri
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The good thing about painting from memory is that so much is forgotten.
Robert Henri
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Manet did not do the expected. He was a pioneer. He followed his individual whim. Told the public what he wanted it to know, not the time worn things the public already knew and thought it wanted to hear again. The public was very much offended.
Robert Henri
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Do whatever you do intensely. The artist is the man who leaves the crowd and goes pioneering. With him there is an idea which is his life.
Robert Henri
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It seems to me that before a man tries to express anything to the world he must recognize in himself an individual, a new one, very distinct from others.
Robert Henri
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I have heard it very often said that an artist does not need intelligence, that his is the province of the soul
Robert Henri
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Each man must take the material that he finds at hand, see that in it there are the big truths of life, the fundamentally big forces, and then express in his art whatever is the cause of his pleasure.
Robert Henri
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The model is not to be copied, but to be realized.
Robert Henri
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Painting should never look as if it were done with difficulty, however difficult it may actually have been.
Robert Henri
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The world will see many fashions of art and most of the world will follow the fashions and make none. These cults - these 'movements' - are absolutely necessary, or at any rate their causes are, for somewhere in their centres are the ones who bear the Idea, the ones who have questioned, 'But what do I think?' and 'How shall I say it best?
Robert Henri
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Pretend you are dancing or singing a picture.
Robert Henri
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Artists must be men of wit, consciously or unconsciously philosophers read, study and think a great deal of life.
Robert Henri
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Do not expect pictures to say the expected some of the best will have surprises for you, which will, at first, shock you.
Robert Henri
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If a certain activity, such as painting, becomes the habitual mode of expression, it may follow that taking up the painting materials and beginning work with them will act suggestively and so presently evoke a flight into the higher state.
Robert Henri
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In a tree there is a spirit of life, a spirit of growth and a spirit of holding its head up.
Robert Henri
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Feel the dignity of a child. Do not feel superior to him, for you are not.
Robert Henri
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Good composition is like a suspension bridge each line adds strength and takes none away... Making lines run into each other is not composition. There must be motive for the connection. Get the art of controlling the observer – that is composition.
Robert Henri