Quote

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

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
Artist
Implies
Persons
Thinks
Truly
Person
Ought
Men
Movement
Thinking
Modern
Open
Everybody
Marcel

More quotes by 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
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
Image
Style is a fraud. I always felt the Greeks were hiding behind their columns.
Willem de Kooning
Image
I might work on a painting for a month, but it has too look like I painted it in a minute.
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
An artist is forced by others to paint out of his own free will.
Willem de Kooning
Image
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
Image
If you're an artist, the problem is to make a picture work whether you are happy or not.
Willem de Kooning
Image
The drawings that interest me most are made with closed eyes. With eyes closed, I feel my hand slide down on the paper. I have an image in mind, but the results always surprise me.
Willem de Kooning
Image
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
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
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.
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
Even abstract shapes must have a likeness
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
The problem with property is that it takes so much of your time.
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 think I'm painting a picture of two women but it may turn out to be a landscape.
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 feel sometimes an American artist must feel, like a baseball player or something - a member of a team writing American history.
Willem de Kooning