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It's really absurd to make... a human image, with paint, today, when you think about it... But then all of a sudden, it was even more absurd not to do it.

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
Make
Absurd
Think
Image
Thinking
Paint
Today
Human
Humans
Even
Portraiture
Really
Sudden

More quotes by 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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In art one idea is as good as another.
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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 might work on a painting for a month, but it has too look like I painted it in a minute.
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Even abstract shapes must have a likeness
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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.
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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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Content is a glimpse of something, an encounter like a flash. It's very tiny - very tiny. Content.
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Watercolors is the first and the last thing an artist does.
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The past does not influence me I influence it.
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Art should not have to be a certain way.
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Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented
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Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure.
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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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The problem with property is that it takes so much of your time.
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Every so often, a painter has to destroy painting. Cezanne did it, Picasso did it with Cubism. Then Pollock did it. He busted our idea of a picture all to hell. Then there could be new paintings again.
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The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves.
Willem de Kooning
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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!
Willem de Kooning
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I think I'm painting a picture of two women but it may turn out to be a landscape.
Willem de Kooning
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If you pick up some paint with your brush and make somebody's nose with it, this is rather ridiculous when you think of it, theoretically or philosophically. It's really absurd to make an image, like a human image, with paint, today.
Willem de Kooning