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

Willem de Kooning

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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
Paint
Tree
Millions
Even
Would
Dollars
Million

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Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented
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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.
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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!
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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.
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I think I'm painting a picture of two women but it may turn out to be a landscape.
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Content is a glimpse of something, an encounter like a flash. It's very tiny - very tiny. Content.
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In art, one idea is as good as another. If one takes the idea of trembling, for instance, all of a sudden most art starts to tremble. Michelangelo starts to tremble. El Greco starts to tremble. All the Impressionists start to tremble.
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I might work on a painting for a month, but it has too look like I painted it in a minute.
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What you do when you paint, you take a brush full of paint, get paint on the picture, and you have faith.
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Once, after finishing a picture, I thought I would stop for awhile, take a trip, do things-the next time I thought of this, I found five years had gone by.
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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.
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In art one idea is as good as another.
Willem de Kooning
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An artist is someone who makes art... He didn't invent it.
Willem de Kooning
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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
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If I stretch my arms and wonder where my fingers are - that is all the space I need as a painter.
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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
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The texture of experience is prior to everything else.
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I feel sometimes an American artist must feel, like a baseball player or something - a member of a team writing American history.
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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.
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Im not someone whos ever said anything definitive about his work. In my life also I have very little fixed form. I can change overnight.
Willem de Kooning