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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.

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
Night
Heavy
Imprisoning
Place
Private
Overworked
Form
Rain
Ached
Home
Late
Horrid
Body
Went
Bones
Men
Head
Hungry
Called
Misery
Space
Prison

More quotes by Willem de Kooning

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Maybe in that earlier phase I was painting the woman in me. Art isn't a wholly masculine occupation, you know.
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In art one idea is as good as another.
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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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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.
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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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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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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. 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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An artist is someone who makes art... He didn't invent it.
Willem de Kooning
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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
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Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented
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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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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An artist is forced by others to paint out of his own free will.
Willem de Kooning
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I make pictures and someone comes in and calls it art.
Willem de Kooning
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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.
Willem de Kooning
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You have to keep on the very edge of something, all the time, or the picture dies.
Willem de Kooning
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If you're an artist, the problem is to make a picture work whether you are happy or not.
Willem de Kooning
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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
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Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure.
Willem de Kooning