Robert Henri Quotes

I'll buy a bottle for anyone who can tell me what makes a picture beautiful!

The political topicality of my October paintings means almost nothing to me, but in many reviews it is the first or only thing that arouses interest, and the response to the pictures varies according to current political circumstance. I find this rather a distraction.

A picture's beauty does not depend on the things portrayed in it.

Colors are beautiful when they are significant.

The value of art is in the observer.

I have never collected an object or figure from Africa or Oceania because of anything curious about it or because of its utility or historic interest. Everything has been chosen entirely because of its aesthetic significance; its form, feeling, structure, and plastic values.

I believe that true art is universal in its appeal.

A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.

Art should be life. It's an imitation of life. It should have some humanity in it.

Painting does more than just point to things. The very act of pointing is a value statement.

I think that there is not really a difference between a 'Peanuts' and a beautiful Renaissance painting. There is something very romantic in the 'Peanuts' - it's at the same level of a novel or a Jane Austen story or a beautiful embroidered rose fabric. It is a piece of romanticism.

We were painting by numbers, starting with the greens. Because that happened to be our favorite color. And this, we figured, had to mean something.

Beauty, which I admit to being in pursuit of, is an extremely suspect word among many in the art world. But I don't think you can get along without it. It's the confirmation of meaning in life.

These gems have life in them: their colors speak, say what words fail of.

The closer and more completely you can come to explaining what a work of art means, the less like art it seems.

Painting doesn't have a function, not in the way that music or film does... I mean, you can dance to music. Music can be used for a soundtrack, so it has a function in that sense, beyond itself. But painting doesn't... But I do believe that painting has a purpose.

The laws of the colors are unutterably beautiful, just because they are not accidental.

In the history of art there are periods when bread seems so beautiful that it nearly gets into museums.

The subject may be of first importance to the artist when he starts a picture, but it should be of least importance in the finished product. The subject is of no aesthetic significance.

Cobalt is a divine color and there is nothing as fine for putting an atmosphere round things. Carmine is the red of wine and is warm and lively like wine. The same goes for emerald green too. It's false economy to dispense with them, with those colors. Cadmium as well.

Color, even more than drawing, is a means of liberation.

When I paint green, it doesn't mean grass; when I paint blue, it doesn't mean sky.

Painting is drawing, with the additional means of color. Painting without drawing is just 'coloriness,' color excitement. To think of color for color's sake is like thinking of sound for sound's sake. Color is like music. The palette is an instrument that can be orchestrated to build form.

Music, of all the arts, stands in a special region, unlit by any star but its own, and utterly without meaning ... except its own.

Color exists in itself, possessing its own beauty.