Vincent Van Gogh Quotes

My art, like my acting, is a profound expression of poetic license.

I want to paint a canvasthat will be nothing but harmonious tone.

Those of us who work in the arts know that depiction is not endorsement. If it was, no artist would be able to paint inhumane practices, no author could write about them, and no filmmaker could delve into the thorny subjects of our time.

Nothing is sillier than this charge of plagiarism. There is no sixth commandment in art. The poet dare help himself wherever he lists, wherever he finds material suited to his work. He may even appropriate entire columns with their carved capitals, if the temple he thus supports be a beautiful one. Goethe understood this very well, and so did Shakespeare before him.

By the combination of lines and colors, under the pretext of some motif taken from nature, I create symphonies and harmonies that represent nothing absolutely real in the ordinary sense of the word but are intended to give rise to thoughts as music does.

If artists do see fields blue they are deranged, and should go to an asylum. If they only pretend to see them blue, they are criminals and should go to prison.

On an instrument you start from one tone. In painting you start from several.

Art is the expression of imagination, not the reproduction of reality.

As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight and the subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of color.

Painting is something that takes place among the colors.

A color which would be 'dirty' if it were the color of a wall, needn't be so in a painting.

What is an artistic picture? An artistic picture is very simple. The creator is not the producer. The creator is not the star. The creator is the director, the person who realizes the picture, like a poet, like an artist. The creator of the picture is free to do whatever he wants, how he wants to do it. That is an artistic picture.

I cannot copy nature in a servile way; I am forced to interpret nature and submit it to the spirit of the picture. From the relationship I have found in all the tones there must result a living harmony of colors, a harmony analogous to that of a musical composition.

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

Only the series of colors on the canvas with all their power and vibrancy could, in combination with each other, render the chromatic feeling of that landscape.

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.

One may do whatever one likes. In art, the only thing is, to make sure that one does like it.

I kind of think that artists throughout history, poets throughout history have been criticized for sharing what's on people's minds and I don't think it's any different now.

I can't work without a model. I won't say I turn my back on nature ruthlessly in order to turn a study into a picture, arranging the colors, enlarging and simplifying; but in the matter of form I am too afraid of departing from the possible and the true.

A work of art is an exaggeration.

My rule was not to paint things as they were. I wasn't copying; I was remaking them as my own.

Many photographers are apt to confuse color with noise, and to congratulate themselves when they have almost blown you down with screeching hues alone-a bebop of electric blues, furious reds, and poison greens.

Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.

The painter doesn't try to reproduce the scene before him... he simplifies and eliminates until he knows exactly what stirred him, sets this down in color and line as simply and as powerfully as possible and so translates his impression into an aesthetic emotion.

Art is not truth; art is the lie which makes us see the truth.