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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.
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
Seems
Vulgarity
Make
Wrapped
Always
Peaceful
Never
Comfort
Think
Pure
Thinking
Seem
Situation
Art
Melodrama
More quotes by Willem de Kooning
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
If I stretch my arms and wonder where my fingers are - that is all the space I need as a painter.
Willem de Kooning
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
Content is a glimpse.
Willem de Kooning
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.
Willem de Kooning
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
Art should not have to be a certain way.
Willem de Kooning
Even an abstract form has to have a likeness.
Willem de Kooning
Style is a fraud. I always felt the Greeks were hiding behind their columns.
Willem de Kooning
I think I'm painting a picture of two women but it may turn out to be a landscape.
Willem de Kooning
Watercolors is the first and the last thing an artist does.
Willem de Kooning
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
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
Willem de Kooning
Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure.
Willem de Kooning
I make pictures and someone comes in and calls it art.
Willem de Kooning
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
I see the canvas and I begin... It's a necessary evil to get into the work, and it's pretty marvelous to be able to get out of it.
Willem de Kooning
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
Yes, I am influenced by everbody. But every time I put my hands in my pockets I find someone else's fingers there.
Willem de Kooning
I feel sometimes an American artist must feel, like a baseball player or something - a member of a team writing American history.
Willem de Kooning
