ODILON REDON

What distinguishes the artist from the dilettante? Only the pain the artist feels. The dilettante looks only for pleasure in art.

I have a feeling only for shadows

The value of art lies in its power to increase our moral force or establish its heightening influence.

The fundamental grey which differentiates the masters, expresses them and is the soul of all colour.

The painter is not an intellectual if, when he has painted a nude woman, he gives us the idea that she is just about to put her clothes back on.

I am certain about what I will never do - but not about what my art will render.

One must respect black. Nothing prostitutes it.

It is precisely from the regret left by the imperfect work that the next one can be born.

My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined.

Nothing in Art is achieved by will alone. It is achieved by docilely submitting to the subconscious.

While I recognize the necessity for a basis of observed reality... true art lies in a reality that is felt.

One must respect black. Nothing prostitutes it.

I await joyous surprises while working, an awakening of the materials that I work with and that my spirit develops.

Artists who approach perfection do not have many ideas.

The fundamental grey which differentiates the masters, expresses them and is the soul of all colour.

The painter is not an intellectual if, when he has painted a nude woman, he gives us the idea that she is just about to put her clothes back on.

Like music my drawings transport us to the ambiguous world of the indeterminate.

I am repelled by those who voice the word 'nature', without having any trace of it in their hearts.

It is difficult to judge one's contemporaries; perhaps it is impossible to understand them.

All my originality consists?in giving life in human fashion to beings which are impossible according to the laws of possibility.

My originality consists in putting the logic of the visible to the service of the invisible.

My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined.

I have a feeling only for shadows

The artist yields often to the stimuli of materials that will transmit his spirit.

True art lies in a reality that is felt.

The value of art lies in its power to increase our moral force or establish its heightening influence.

The Artist submits from day to day to the fatal rhythm of the impulses of the universal world which encloses him, continual centre of sensations, always pliant, hypnotized by the marvels of nature which he loves, he scrutinizes. His eyes, like his soul, are in perpetual communion with the most fortuitous of phenomena.

I have often, as an exercise and as a sustenance, painted before an object down to the smallest accidents of its visual appearance; but the day left me sad and with an unsatiated thirst. The next day I let the other source run, that of imagination, through the recollection of the forms and I was then reassured and appeased.

It is precisely from the regret left by the imperfect work that the next one can be born.

Nothing in Art is achieved by will alone. It is achieved by docilely submitting to the subconscious.

The good work proceeds with tenacity, intention, without interruption, with an equal measure of passion and reason and it must surpass that goal the artist has set for himself.

I am certain about what I will never do - but not about what my art will render.

What distinguishes the artist from the dilettante? Only the pain the artist feels. The dilettante looks only for pleasure in art.

I have placed there a little door opening on to the mysterious. I have made stories.