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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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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
Measure
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Somewhere
Rubens
Students
Dimples
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Marvelous
Great
Classic
Really
Casts
Life
Draw

More quotes by Willem de Kooning

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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.
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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 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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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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Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure.
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In art one idea is as good as another.
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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.
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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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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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Content is a glimpse.
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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.
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Watercolors is the first and the last thing an artist does.
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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.
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Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented
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I'd like to get all the colors in the world into one painting
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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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An artist is forced by others to paint out of his own free will.
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Style is a fraud. I always felt the Greeks were hiding behind their columns.
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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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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