Quote

Even abstract shapes must have a likeness

Willem de Kooning

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Willem de Kooning
Age: 92 †
Born: 1904
Born: April 24
Died: 1997
Died: March 19
Artist
Designer
Drawer
Painter
Sculptor
University Teacher
R'dam
Willem De Kooning
Willem DeKooning
William de Kooning
Willem Dekooning
willem de kooning
Likeness
Abstract
Shapes
Must
Even

More quotes by Willem de Kooning

Image
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
Image
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
Image
And then there is that one-man movement, Marcel Duchamp for me a truly modern movement because it implies that each artist can do what he thinks he ought to a movement for each person and open for everybody.
Willem de Kooning
Image
I have to change to stay the same.
Willem de Kooning
Image
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
Image
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
Image
My interest in desperation lies only in that sometimes I find myself having become desperate. Very seldom do I start out that way. I can see of course that, in the abstract, thinking and all activity is rather desperate.
Willem de Kooning
Image
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
Image
I make pictures and someone comes in and calls it art.
Willem de Kooning
Image
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
Image
Man's own form in space - his body - was a private prison and that it was because of this imprisoning misery - because he was hungry and overworked and went to a horrid place called home late at night in the rain, and his bones ached and his head was heavy.
Willem de Kooning
Image
I don't paint to live, I live to paint.
Willem de Kooning
Image
Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure.
Willem de Kooning
Image
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
Image
I'd like to get all the colors in the world into one painting
Willem de Kooning
Image
Content is a glimpse.
Willem de Kooning
Image
Content is a glimpse of something, an encounter like a flash. It's very tiny - very tiny. Content.
Willem de Kooning
Image
I read somewhere that Rubens said students should not draw from life, but draw from all the great classic casts. Then you really get the measure of them, you really know what to do. And then, put in your own dimples. Isn't that marvelous!
Willem de Kooning
Image
You have to keep on the very edge of something, all the time, or the picture dies.
Willem de Kooning
Image
Style is a fraud. I always felt the Greeks were hiding behind their columns.
Willem de Kooning