A good painter is to paint two main things, men and the working of man's mind.
And painted portraits have a life of their own that comes from deep in the soul of the painter and where the machine can't go.
I'm not at all interested in painting the object just as it is in nature. Certainly I'm much more interested in the mood of a thing than the truth of a thing.
You think my paintings are calm, like windows in some cathedral? You should look again. I'm the most violent of all the American painters. Behind those colours there hides the final cataclysm.
Vuillard balances too far on the side of fantasy... the people in his pictures are not properly defined. As he's an admirable draughtsman it must be that he just doesn't want to give them mouths and hands and feet.
There's a very fine line between underacting and not acting at all. And not acting is what a lot of actors are guilty of. It amazes me how some of these little numbers with dreamy looks and a dead pan are getting away wit it. I'd hate to see them on stage with a dog act.
When you are doing portraits, you have that intimacy with someone for a few minutes. For a really good portrait, you don't take the portrait - it's given.
The portrait is one of the most curious art forms. It demands special qualities in the artist, and an almost total kinship with the model.
Poets and men of action differ: the former yield to their feelings in order to reproduce them in lively colors, and therefore judge only ex post facto; the latter feel and judge at one and the same time.
I think the idea of embodying the physical presence of a character is the same on stage and screen. There are just different levels of expression to keep in mind for each platform.
