Cubism, described & explained by the artists, in their quotes

 Here you find quotes on Cubism and Cubist art by a lot of different artist from inside and outside the circle of Cubism. The different quotes from varying point of views help to value and appreciate Cubism with a realistic eye. Also it gives us information how Cubism inspired other artists. – editor Fons Heijnsbroek

 

Pablo Picasso’s artist quotes on the start & history of  Cubism

- Almost every evening ( circa 1908, ed.), either I went to Braque’s studio or Braque came to mine. Each of us had to see what the other had done during the day. We criticized each other’s paintings (a comment Picasso gave Francoise Gilot in December 1908, fh)
* Picasso on the start of Cubism with Braque – source of his quote: “Futurism”, ed. By Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 311, note 721
- And from the point of view of art there are no concrete or abstract forms, but only forms which are more or less convincing lies. That those lies are necessary to our mental selves is beyond any doubt, as it is through them that we form our aesthetic point of view of life. (Paris 1923).* source of art statement of Pablo Picasso, on ‘abstract forms’: ‘Picasso speaks’, text by Marius Zayas, in ‘The Arts’, New York, May 1923

                                   

 - Cubism is no different from any other school of painting. The same principles and the same elements are common to all. The fact that for a long time cubism has not been understood and that even today there are people who cannot see anything in it, means nothing. I do not read English, an English book is a blank book to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist… (Paris 1923).
* Picasso on painting art in Cubism – source of his quote: “Futurism”, ed. By Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 311

 

- Many think that Cubism is an art of transition, an experiment which is to bring ulterior results. Those who think that way have not understood it. Cubism is not either a seed or a fetus, but an art dealing primarily with forms, and when a form is realized it is there to live its own life… …If Cubism is an art of transition I am sure that the only thing that will come out of it is another form of Cubism (Paris 1923).
* Picasso on painting art and Cubism – source of his quote: “Futurism”, ed. By Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 311, note 721

 

- Mathematics, trigonometry, chemistry, psychoanalysis, music, and what not have been related to cubism to give it an easier interpretation. All this has been pure literature, not to say nonsense, which brought bad results, blinding people with theories. Cubism has kept itself within the limits and limitations of painting, never pretending to go beyond it (Paris, 1923).
* source, artist quote of Pablo Picasso, on Cubist art: ‘Picasso speaks’, text by Marius Zayas, in ‘The Arts’, New York, May 1923

 

- When we did Cubist paintings (in the early Cubist period, Picasso and Gerorges Braque, ed.) our intention was not to produce Cubist paintings but to express what was within us. No one laid down a course of action for us, and our friends the poets (as Appolinaire and Cendral, ed.) followed our endeavor attentively but they never dictated it to us (Boisgeloup, winter 1934).
* Picasso on cubist painting and the start of Cubism with Braque – source of his quote± “Futurism”, ed. By Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008

 

- It is not what the artist does that counts. But what he is. Cezanne would never have interested me if he had lived and thought like Jaques-Emile Blanche, even if the apple he had painted had been ten times more beautiful. What interests us is the anxiety of Cézanne, the teaching of Cézanne, the anguish of Van Gogh, in short the inner drama of the man. The rest is false. (Boisgeloup, winter 1934).
* source of the quote of Picasso, on Cezanne´s meaning: from an interview by Christian Zervos, 1935; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough -, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 259

 

 

Georges Braque‘s artist quotes on the start & history of  Cubism

- At that time (around 1907/08, ed.) I was very friendly with Picasso. Our temperaments were very different, but we had the same idea. Later on it became clear, Picasso is Spanish and I am French; as everyone knows that mean a lot of differences, but during those days the differences did not count…    …We were living in Montmarte, we used to meet every day, we used to talk…     …In those years Picasso and I said things to each other that nobody will ever say again, that nobody could say any more…    …It was rather like a pair of climbers roped together.   
* Georges Braque, source of his artist  quote on the start of Cubism with Picasso, in Paris: a conversation with Dora Vallier, 1954; as quoted in “Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough -”, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson , London, 1963

 

- One day I noticed that I could go on working art my motif no matter what the weather might be. I no longer needed the sun, for I took my light everywhere with me. (remembering the end of his ‘Fauvist’ years c. 1906/07, ed.)
* Georges Braque on the period after his Fauvism painting in his early life: the book written by John Rusell, London 1959; as quoted in “Braque”, Edwin Mullins, Thames and Hudson, London 1968, p. 30

 

- Thanks to the oval I have discovered the meaning of the horizontal and the vertical. (quote of ca. 1910, ed.)
* Braque, quote on the oval / source “Abstract Painting”, Michel Seuphor, Dell Publishing Co.,1964, p. 39

 

- When objects shattered into fragments appeared in my painting about 1909; this for me was a way of getting closest to the object…   …Fragmentation helped me to establish space and movement in space.
* quote on fragmentation in painting during early Cubism, source: “Braque”, Edwin Mullins, Thames and Hudson, London 1968, p. 55

 

- Colour could give rise to sensations which would interfere with our (=  Braque & Picasso, ed.) conception of space.
* Braque’s quotes on colour in early Cubist painting “Braque”, Edwin Mullins, Thames and Hudson, London 1968, p. 55

 

- I started to introduce letters into my pictures. These were forms which could not be deformed., because, being two-dimensional, they existed outside three-dimensional space; their inclusion in a picture allowed a distinction to be made between objects which were situated in space and those which belonged outside space (the letters he used, ed.).
* Braque’s comment on using parts of letters in Cubist painting art, source: “Braque”, Edwin Mullins, Thames and Hudson, London 1968, p. 68

 

- colour came into its own with papiers collés…   …with these works (collage art, ed. ) we (Braque and a little later Picasso started to make ‘collages’ around 1912, ed.) succeeded in dissociating colour from form, in putting it on a footing independent of form, for that was the crux of the matter. Colour acts simultaneously with form, but has nothing to do with form.
* Georges Braque, his quote on papiers collés / collage art in early Cubism, source: “Braque”, Edwin Mullins, Thames and Hudson, London 1968, p. 75

 

– The arts which achieve their effect through purity have never been arts that were good for everything. Greek sculpture (among others) with its decadence, teaches us this. (Paris 1917)
* Georges Braque, his quote on purity in art; from “Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries”, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 422

 

- The painter thinks in terms of form and color. The goal is not to be concerned with the reconstitution of an anecdotal fact, but with constitution of a pictorial fact. (Paris 1917)
* Braque´s quote in form and color in Cubist painting: “Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries”, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 422

 

- I felt dissatisfied with traditional perspective. Merely a mechanical process, this perspective never conveys things in full. It starts from one viewpoint and never gets away from it. But the viewpoint is quite unimportant. It is though someone were to draw profiles all his life, leading people to think that a man has only one eye…   …When one got to think like that, everything changed, you cannot imagine how much!
* Braque´s quote on modern human perception and art, source: conversation with Dora Vallier, 1954; as quoted in “Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough -”, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson , London, 1963

 

– I started above all by producing still-life because in nature there is a tactile space, I would say almost manual.
* quote on creating still life: ‘Braque, la peinture et nous’, Dora Vallier, ‘Cahier d’art, Paris 1954, p. 16

 

- What greatly attracted me – and it was the main line of advance of Cubism – was how to give material expression to this new space of which I had an inkling. So I began to paint chiefly still life’s, because in nature there is a tactile, I would almost say a manual space. I wrote about this moreover ‘When a still life is no longer within reach, it ceases to be a still life… ‘.  …For me that expressed the desire I have always had to touch a thing, not just to look at it. It was that space that attracted me strongly, for that was the earliest Cubist painting – the quest for space.
* Georges Braque, quote on the attraction of still life painting t create tactile space, from: conversation with Dora Vallier, 1954; as quoted in “Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough -”, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson , London, 1963

 

– We (Picasso and Braque, ed.) were living in Montmartre, we saw each other every day…  …We were like two mountaineers roped together. (Braque is describing their common years before World War 1., ed.)
* Braque, quote on his relation with Picasso in early Cubism in Paris, from: “Braque”, Edwin Mullins, Thames and Hudson, London 1968, p. 10

 

- Picasso and I said things to each other during those particular years ( 1910 -1913, ed.) that nobody would any longer know how to say, that nobody would be able to understand any …, things that would e incomprehensible, and which gave us so much pleasure.
* Braque, quote on his relation with Picasso in early Cubism in Paris, from: ‘Braque, la peinture et nous’, Vallier, ‘Cahier d’art, Paris 1954, p. 14

 

- When we were so friendly with Picasso, there was a time when we had difficulty in recognizing our own pictures. Later, when the revelation went deeper, differences appeared. Revelation is the one thing that cannot be taken from you. But before the revelation took place, there was still a marked intention of carrying painting in a direction that could re-establish the bond between Picasso and ourselves.
* Braque, quote on his relation with Picasso during early Cubist years in Paris, from: conversation with Dora Vallier, 1954; as quoted in “Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough -”, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson , London, 1963

 

- I considered that the painter’s personality should be kept out of things, and therefore pictures should be anonymous. It was I who decided that pictures should not be signed, and for a time Picasso did the same. I thought that from the moment someone else could do the same as myself, there was no difference between the pictures and they should not be signed. Afterwards I realized it was not so and began to sign my pictures again. Picasso had begun again anyhow. I realized that one cannot reveal oneself without mannerism, without some evident trace of one’s personality. But all the same one should not go too far in that direction…
* Georges Braque, quote on signing the work or not during the early Cubist years (compare Arp’s comparable remark on anonymous art, e.d.), from a conversation with Dora Vallier, 1954; as quoted in “Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough -”, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson , London, 1963

 

- If I have called Cubism a new order, it is without any revolutionary ideas or any reactionary ideas…    …One cannot escape from one’s own epoch, however revolutionary one may be. I do not think my painting has ever been revolutionary. It was not directed against any kind of painting. I have never wanted to prove that I was right and someone else wrong…   …If there is a touch of reaction, since life imposes that, it is minute. And then it is so difficult to judge a thing historically, separated from its environment: it is the relationship between a man and what he does that counts. That’s what good and touches us.
* quote by Braque on Cubist painting and its revolting attitude, from a conversation with Dora Vallier, 1954; as quoted in “Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough -”, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson , London, 1963

 

- If we had never met Picasso, would Cubism have been what it is? I think not. The meeting with Picasso was a circumstance in our lives.
* Braque’s quote on the importance of Picasso for the creation of Cubism art: froma conversation with Dora Vallier, 1954; as quoted in “Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough -”, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson , London, 1963

 

- What particularly attracted me (in Braque‘s Still-life with Musical instruments, he painted in 1908 – 1909, ed.)…   …was the materialization of this new space that I felt to be in the offing. So I began to concentrate on still-life’s, because in the still-life you have a tactile, I might almost say a manual space…  …This answered to the hankering I have always had to touch things and not merely see them. It was this space that particularly attracted me, for this was the first concern of Cubism, the investigation of space…   …In tactile space you measure the distance separating you from the object, whereas in visual space you measure the distance separating things from each other. This is what led me, long ago, from landscape to still-life.
* Georges Braque, his quote on his creation of many  still life paintings and the aspect of tactile space, from: “Braque”, Edwin Mullins, Thames and Hudson, London 1968, p. 41

 

– The whole Renaissance tradition is antipathic to me. The hard-and-fast rules of perspective which it succeeded in imposing on art were a ghastly mistake which it has taken four centuries to redress; Cezanne and after him Picasso and myself can take a lot of credit for this…   …Scientific perspective forces the objects in a picture to disappear away from the beholder instead of bringing them within his reach as painting should.
* Braque’s  quote on different kinds of perspectives in the art directions, from: ‘The Observer, John Richardson, 1 December 1957; as quoted in “Braque”, Edwin Mullins, Thames and Hudson, London 1968, p. 128

 

- I would say that it was ‘poetry’ which distinguishes the Cubist paintings which Picasso and I arrived at intuitively from the lifeless sort of painting which those who followed us tried, with such unfortunate results, to arrive at theoretically.
* quote by Braque on early Cubist painting and the followers of Cubism, practiced as theory, from: ‘The Observer’ 1 December 1957, an interview with John Richardson
 

 

Fernand Leger‘s artist quotes on Cubism

…In Paul Cezanne’s letters I notice ideas like these: “Objects must turn, recede, and live. I wish to make something lasting from impressionism, like the art in the museums…   …For an impressionist, to paint after nature is not to paint the object, but to express sensations…  …After having looked at the old masters, one must take haste to leave them and to verify in one’s self the instincts, the sensations that dwell in us.
* artist quote of Fernand Leger – he refers to a meaningful quote by Cezanne, important for his personal painting, from: ‘Contemporary Achievements in Painting’, Fernand Leger, ‘Soirées de Paris’, Paris 1914; as quoted in “The documents of 20th century art – Functions of Painting by Fernand Leger”, Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1973, n. p.

 

– When one crosses a landscape by automobile or express train, it becomes fragmented; it loses in descriptive value but gains in synthetic value. The view through the door of the railroad car or the automobile windshield, in combination with the speed, has altered the habitual look of things. A modern man registers a hundred times more sensory impressions than an eighteenth-century artist; so much so that our language, for example is full of diminutives and abbreviations.
* artist quote of Leger on  modern perception and its influence on modern art like Cubism, from: ‘Contemporary Achievements in Painting’, Fernand Leger, ‘Soirées de Paris’, Paris 1914; as quoted in “The documents of 20th century art – Functions of Painting by Fernand Leger”, Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1973, p. 11

 

- The compression of the modern picture, its variety, its breaking up of forms…   …It is certain that the evolution of the means of locomotion and their speed have a great deal to do with the new way of seeing. Many superficial people raise the cry “anarchy” in front of these pictures because they cannot follow the whole evolution of contemporary life that painting records.
* quote by Leger on the necessity of breaking up forms in painting art of Cubism, taken from: ‘Contemporary Achievements in Painting’, Fernand Leger, ‘Soirées de Paris’, Paris 1914; as quoted in “The documents of 20th century art – Functions of Painting by Fernand Leger”, Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1973, p. 12.

- … (painting, ed. ) has never been so truly realistic, so firmly attached to its own period as it is today. A kind of painting that is realistic in the highest sense is beginning to appear, and it is here today…   …The advertising billboard, dictated by modern commercial needs, that brutally cuts across a landscape…  …this yellow or red poster shouting in a timid landscape, is the best of possible reasons for the new painting; it topples the whole sentimental literary concept and announces the advent of plastic contrast.
* artist quote by Fernand Leger on modern times itself which expresses itself in modern painting: ‘Contemporary Achievements in Painting’, Fernand Léger, ‘Soirées de Paris’, Paris 1914; as quoted in “The documents of 20th century art – Functions of Painting by Fernand Leger”, Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1973, p. 12.

 

- Naturally, in order to find in this break (in visual perception, ed.) with time-honored habits a basis for a new pictorial harmony and a plastic means of dealing with life and movement, there must be an artistic sensibility far in advance of the normal vision of the crowd.
* artist quote by Fernand Leger on modern painting art: ‘Contemporary Achievements in Painting’, Fernand Leger, ‘Soirées de Paris’, Paris 1914; as quoted in “The documents of 20th century art – Functions of Painting by F. Leger”, Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1973, p. 12

 

- From the day that the impressionists liberated painting, the modern picture set out at once the structure itself on contrasts; instead of submitting to a subject, the painter makes an insertion and uses a subject in the service of purely plastic means…   …(the contemporary painter) must prepare himself in order to confer a maximum of plastic effect on means that have not yet been used. He must not become an imitator of the new visual objectivity, but be a sensibility completely subject to the new state of things.
* quote by Fernand Leger on plastic painting related to the modern state of things in painting art: ‘Contemporary Achievements in Painting’, F. Leger, ‘Soirées de Paris’, Paris 1914; as quoted in “The documents of 20th century art – Functions of Painting by Fernand Leger”, Thames and Hudson Ltd, London 1973, p. 14

 

 

Robert Delaunay‘s artist quotes on Cubism

 

- Light in nature creates movement in colour. The movement is provided by the relationships of uneven measures, of colours contrasts among themselves and constitutes Reality. (note of 1913, on the importance of light, ed.)
* Robert Delaunay, his art quote on color in painting and simultaneousness as art technique in Orphism: a text on his ‘Windows’-paintings, a series artworks he started in 1912

 

- ‘Simultaneousness’ is a technique. Simultaneous contrast is the most up-to-date of this technique in this field. Simultaneous contrast is visible depth – Reality, Form, construction, representation. Depth is the new inspiration. We live in depth, we travel in depth. I’m in it. The senses are in it. And the mind is too.
* Delaunay, artist quote on Simultaneousness, contrast and depth in Orphism, from: from an article by art-critic Félix Fénéon, who collected notes of Delaunay, published in ‘Simultanism’, October 1913; as quoted in “Futurism”, ed. By Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 57

 

- What they (the Futurists like Severini, Carra and Russolo, who debated in Paris intensively with the Cubist artists and their spokesman Appolinaire, ed.) are saying is okay.
* Robert Delaunay”s quote on the Futurist art concepts like simultaneousness and color-divisionism: from a letter, February 1912; as quoted in “Futurism”, ed. By Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 184

 

- The woman of the (painting) ‘The City of Paris’, (Delaunay painted it in 1910 – 1912) sums up the Cubist period… …the (painting) ‘The Cardiff team’ (1913) is more significant in the expression of colour, less shattered. The yellow poster in the complete picture contrasts with the blues, greens and orange.
* artist quote in which Delaunay explains his development from Cubism towards his color art of Orphism between 1910 till 1913: from the document ‘Du Cubisme a l’art abstrait 1924; published by Francastel; as quoted in “Futurism”, ed. By Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 190

 

- The need for a new subject has inspired the poets, launching them onto a fresh path and bringing to their attention to poetry of la Tour (Eiffel tower, ed.) which communicates mysteriously with the whole world. Rays of light, waves of symphonic sounds. Factories, bridges, iron structures, airships, the numberless gyrations of aero planes, windows seen by crowd simultaneously.
* Robert Delaunay’s artist quote refers to the Eiffel tower as symbol for a radiation-Futurist modern time – published in: ‘Les Soirées de Paris’, and republished in ‘Sturm’ (a German art-magazine edited by Walden, fh); quoted in a document, published by Francastel op. cit. October 1913 11 bis p. 111

 

Umberto Boccioni‘s artist quotes on static Cubism

 

- Get all the information you can about the Cubists, and about Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso (in his letter to Futurist art/mate Severini, staying in Paris, ed.). Go to Kahnweilers’ (gallery, ed.). And if he’s got photos of recent works – produced after I have left -, buy one or two. Bring us (= the Futurists in Italy, ed.) back all the information you can get.
* Umberto Boccioni, source of his artist quote on the Cubists in Paris:, from a letter to Gino Severini in Paris, Summer 1911; as quoted in “Futurism”, ed. By Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 27

 

- Your eyes, accustomed to semi-darkness, will soon open to more radiant visions of light. The shadows which we shall paint shall be more luminous than the high-lights of our predecessors, and our pictures, next to those of the museums, will shine like blinding daylight, compared with deepest night. We conclude that painting cannot exist today without divisionism…  …Divisionism, for the modern painter, must be an innate complementariness which we declare to be essential and necessary.
* Umberto Boccioni, his statement on Divisionism as necessarily element for modern painting – firmly rejected by Cubism: ‘Manifesto of Futurist Painters’, Boccocione, Carrà, Russolo, April 1910; as quoted in “Futurism”, ed. By Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 92

 

- …..they (= the Cubist painters, ed.) continued to paint objects motionless, frozen, and all the static aspects of Nature; they worship the traditionalism of Poussin, of Ingres, of Camille Corot, ageing and petrifying their art with an obstinate attachment to the past, which to our eyes remains totally incomprehensible.
* Boccioni’s critical art statement on the static and classical character of contemporary Cubism in those days in Paris, from: ‘Les exposants au public’, Boccioni et al.; exh. Cat. Galerie Bernheim-Jeune & Cie February 1912, pp. 2, 3

 

- …is it indisputable that that several aesthetic declarations of our French comrades (of Cubism, ed.) display a sort of masked academicism. Is it not, indeed, a return to the Academy to declare that the subject, in painting, has a perfectly insignificant value?…   …To paint from the posing model as an absurdity, and an act of mental cowardice, even if the model be translated upon the picture in linear, spherical and cubic forms …
* critical art statement on the static and academic character of contemporary Cubism, practised in Paris, those days, from; ‘Les exposants au public’, Boccioni et al.; exh. Cat. Galerie Bernheim-Jeune & Cie February 1912, pp. 2, 3

 

- Let us explain again by examples. In painting a person on a balcony, seen from inside the room do not limit the scene to what the square of the window renders visible; we try to render the sum total of visual sensations which the person on the balcony has experienced; the sunbaked throng in the street, the double row of houses which stretch to right and left, the beflowered balconies etc. This implies the simultaneity of the ambient, and, therefore, the dislocation and the dislocation and dismemberment of objects, the scattering and fusion of details, freed from accepted logic and independent from one another. In order to make the spectator live in the center of the picture, as we express it in our manifesto (the ‘Manifesto of Futurist Painters’, 1910, ed.), the picture must be the synthesis of what one remembers and what one sees. …   …. We have declared in our manifesto that what must be rendered is the dynamic sensation, that is to say, the particular rhythm of each object, its inclination, its movement, or more exactly, its interior force.
* Boccioni’s famous statement on the simultaneity (like Delanunay also emphasized) in human modern  perception, neglected by Cubism as traditional painting style, from  ‘Les exposants au public’, Boccioni et al.; exh. Cat. Galerie Bernheim-Jeune & Cie February 1912, p. 47

 

- ……since our past is the greatest in the world and thus all the more dangerous for our life!… …We must smash, demolish and destroy our traditional harmony, which makes us fall into a ’gracefulness’ created by timid and sentimental Cubs (= an attack on Cubism, ed.)
* Umberto Boccioni’, quote on the necessity of destroying traditional harmony in art,  like also Mondrian declared, the Dutch De Stijl artist, admired by the Futurists; taken from his Sculptural Manifesto, 1912; as quoted in “Futurism”, ed. By Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008

 

- With this new tendency the Cubism dubbed “Impressionism of forms” according to Appolinaire, is entering a final and glorious phase: ….”Orphism, pure painting, simultaneity…” ….And there you have it, as many obvious plagiaries of what has formed, from its earliest appearances, the essence of Futurist painting and sculpture (it was Delaunay who launched simultaneity in his Orphism, ed.). But we insist on sorting things out. Orphism, let us say it right away, is just an elegant masquerade of the basic principles of Futurist painting. This new trend simply illustrates the profit that our French colleagues managed to driver from our first Futurist exhibition in Paris.
* Umberto Boccioni’s critical statement on Orphism (Delaunay) and simultaneity by Delaunay as a soft kind of futurism painting: ‘Les futurists plagues en France’, Boccioni, in ‘Lacerba, Florence 1, no. 7, 1 April 1913

 

- From our very first conversation in the Closerie des Lilas the day after the opening of the first exhibition of Futurist painting (in Paris, February 1912, fh), I noticed that Fernand Leger was one of the most gifted and promising Cubists…   …Léger’s article (‘Les origins de la peinture et sa valeur representative’, Mai 1913, ed.) is a true act of Futurist faith which give us great satisfaction (all the more so since the author is kind enough to mention us)
* quote on the position of Fernand Leger in the debate between Futurism and Cubism in Paris: ‘Il dinamismo futurista et la pittura francese’, Boccioni; as quoted in “Futurism”, ed. By Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 118

 

- We wanted a complementarity of form and colour. So we made a synthesis of analyses of colour (color-divisionism of Seurat, Signac and Cross) and analyses of form (form- divisionism of Picasso and Georges Braque).
* Boccioni’s artist quote on the complementarity of form and colour in Futurist painting art‘Dynanisme plastique’ 1914

 

 

Carlo Carra‘s artist quotes on  geometric Cubism

 

 – The Cubists, to be objective, restrict themselves to considering things by turning around them, to produce their geometric writing. So they remain at a stage of intelligence which sees everything and feels nothing, which brings everything to a standstill in order to describe everything. We Futurists are trying, on the contrary, with the power of intuition, to place ourselves at the very centre of things, in such a way that our ego forms with their own uniqueness a single complex. We thus give plastic planes as plastic expansion in space, obtaining this feeling of something in perpetual motion which is peculiar to everything living.
* source of art quote by Carra: ‘Piani plastici come espanzione sferica nello spazio’, March 1913; as quoted in “Futurism”, ed. By Didier Ottinger

- He (Picasso, fh) is almost one of us (= the Futurists, ed).
* source: “Carlo Carra – Ardengo Soffici: Lettere 1913 – 1929”, Feltrinelli, Milan, 1983, p. 246

 

Gino Severini‘s artist quotes on  Cubism

 

– The Cubists and the other avant-garde can see the danger of being called Futurists. They are attracted by research involving the movement and the complexity of subjects. To avoid this kind of treat, they invented Orphism.
* Gino Severini, source of artist quote on Cubist Orphism art in Paris, in a: letter to Marinetti, 31 March 1913; as quoted in ‘Severini futurista’, op. cit, p. 146. (Severini was a famous painter of Italian Futurism, later he was creating synthetic Cubism and metaphysical painting art, similar as De Chirico)

 

- Appolinaire (French famous writer, poet and leading art theoretician on Cubism in Paris, ed.) told me about a book of his on the Cubists that’s about to come out. He divides the Cubists into Physical Cubists, (Gleize) [sic], who add some dramatic elements to their expression of external realities; Scientific Cubists (Picasso, Metzinger) and “Orphiques” [sic] (I give you (to Boccioni, ed.) this last classification in French because I don’t know how to translate it); in Appolinaire’s opinion the “Orphiques” [sic] seek new elements of expressing abstract realities; and we Futurists belong with the latter.
* Gino Severini, source of his critic quote on Orphism in Paris Cubism: from his letter to his Futurist art/mate Boccioni, Paris, 29 October 1912; as quoted in “Futurism”, ed. By Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 55

 

- The truth lies somewhere between these two aesthetics (between static Cubism and dynamic Futurism, ed. ) The ‘pure form’ of Ingres (famous French classical painter, ed.) led inevitably to a life-less Platonism; the lyricism and romanticism of Delacroix (famous French Romanticism painter, ed.) no longer tailed with our cerebral and geometric age…  …as in all great ages, today’s artwork must be the synthesis of these two things (1917) .
* Gino Severini, source of his quote on static Cubism art and dynamic Futurism, from: ‘Preface’, Severini; in exhibition catalogue, Photo Secession Gallery, New York, March 1917

 

- In our young days, when Modigliani and I first came to Paris, in 1906, nobody was very clear about ideas. But unconsciously, we knew quite a lot of things, of which we became aware later on. …   … In the early days the Cubists’ method of grasping an object was to go round and round it (circling round about the object, ed.); the futurists declared that one had to get inside it (inside the object, ed.). In my opinion the two views can be reconciled in a poetic cognition of the world. But to the very fact that they appealed to the creative depths in the painter by awakening in him hidden forces which were intuitive and vitalizing, the Futurist theories did more than the Cubist principles to open up unexplored and boundless horizons.
* Gino Severini, source of artist quote on the object in Futurism and Cubism art, from: ”Letters of the great artists”, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson , London, 1963, p. 248

 

- … since then (probably around 1916, ed.) I have found consolation in William Blake (English religious painter and graphic artist; ‘Without Contraries is no progression’’, he says in his ‘’Proverbs of Hell’’. And Charles Baudelaire’s idea that ‘Variety is an essential condition of life’ seems to me to be in perfect accord with my aspirations and with my intention, as a Futurist painter, to put ’life’ in the place occupied by ’reasoning”, in the art of the Cubist period.
* Gino Severini, source of his quote on accepting Life and rejecting Reasoning of the Cubist approach, from ”Letters of the great artists”, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 247

 

- The intellectual abstraction of the second period of Cubism (here: analytic Cubism, ed.) was of great importance, however. By its aspirations to the ‘eternal’ and its “concept of proportion inspired by the Classics” it revived the sense of craftsmanship concept in many painters. And this perfectly coincided with another of my ambitions – which was to make, with paint, an object having the same perfection of craftsmanship that a cabinet-maker would put into a piece of furniture.
* Gino Severini, source of his quote on analytic Cubism with classical aspirations, from: ”Letters of the great artists”, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson , London, 1963, p. 248

 

- Futurism and Cubism are comparable in importance to the invention of perspective, for which they substituted a new concept of space. All subsequent movements were latent in them or brought about by them…    … the two movements cannot be regarded as in opposition to each other, even though they started from opposite points; I maintain (an idea approved by Appolinaire and later by Matisse) that they are two extremes of the same sign, tending to coincide at certain points which only the poetic instinct of the painter can discover: “poetry” being the content and “raison d’être” of art.
* Gino Severini, source of his artist quote on perspective, related to Cubism and Futurism, from: ”Letters of the great artists, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson , London, 1963, pp. 248, 249

Piet Mondrian‘s artist quotes on Cubism

                             

- It is clear to me that this is art for the future. Futurism, although it has advanced beyond naturalism, occupies itself too much with human sensations. Cubism – which in its content is still too much concerned with earlier aesthetic products, and thus less rooted in its own time than Futurism – Cubism has taken a giant step in the direction of abstraction, and is in this respect of its own time and of the future. Thus in its content it is not modern, but in its effect it is.
* quote by Piet Mondrian on the modern aspect of Cubism and Futurism, from: a letter to the Dutch art critic and buyer of Mondrians paintings, H. P. Bremmer Paris 29 January 1914; as quoted in “Mondrian, -The Art of Destruction”, Carel Blotkamp, Reaktion Books LTD. London 2001, p. 77
– And finally I must tell you that I was influenced (during his stay in Paris 1912/13, ed.) by seeing the work of Picasso, whom I ‘greatly’ admire. I am not ashamed to speak of his influence, for I believe that it is better to be receptive to correction than to be satisfied with one’s own imperfection, and to think that one is O so original! Just as so many painters think – And besides, I am surely totally different from Picasso, as one is generally wont to say.
* quote by Piet Mondrian on the influence of Cubism of his development as artist, from: a letter to the Dutch art critic and buyer of Mondrians paintings, H. P. Bremmer Paris 29 January 1914; as quoted in “Mondrian, -The Art of Destruction”, Carel Blotkamp, Reaktion Books LTD. London 2001, p. 81

                                                               

- I believe that new art must differ totally in its manifestation from art as we know it, and people may be very reluctant to accept this. It is perhaps true to say, as someone did of cubism, that ‘To sum up: since art is a need to create rather than imitate, the “cubists” rousing themselves from the sentimentality born of the picturesque aspect of some natural spectacle or other, disengage the fleeting aspects from those which are constant and absolute, and with the aid of these two elements, construct a reality equivalent to that which they see before them’. Thus it is a question of finding the true equivalence (that, offered by Cubism is still not true equivalence), and this can only be ‘that which is not nature at all, and is nonetheless one with nature’ (as in Neo-Plasticism De Stijl, ed.)
* source of quote by Piet Mondrian on Cubist art, from: a letter to Lodewijk van Deijssel (who reacted as Dutch art critic on Mondrians essay: ‘Le Néo-plasticisme’, ed. ) Paris, February 1921; as quoted in “Mondrian, -The Art of Destruction”, Carel Blotkamp, Reaktion Books LTD. London 2001, p. 136

 

- Neo-Plasticism (is synonym for De Stijl, ed.) has its roots in Cubism. It could just as easy be called the Painting of Real Abstraction. Since the abstract can be expressed by a plastic reality…    …It achieves what all painting has tried to achieve but has been able to express only in a veiled manner. By their position and their dimension as well as by the importance of given to colour, the coloured planes express in a plastic way only relations and not forms. Neo-Plasticism imparts to these relations an aesthetic balance and thereby expresses universal harmony…   …For the moment what art had discovered must still be limited to art itself. Our environment cannot yet be realized as a creation of pure harmony. Art today is at the very point formerly occupied by religion. In its deepest meaning art was the transposition of the natural (to another plane); in practice it always sought to achieve harmony between man and untransposed nature. Generally speaking, so do Theosophy and Anthroposophy, although these already possessed the original symbol of balance. And this is why they never were able to achieve equivalent relations, that is to say true harmony. (around 1921/23, ed.)
* source, quote by Piet Mondrian on the temporary religious dimension of modern art: from a letter to Rudolph Steiner; as quoted in “Abstract Painting”, Michel Seuphor, Dell Publishing Co 1964, p. 83-85

 

– Cubism did not accept the logical consequences of its own discoveries; it was not developing abstraction towards its own goal, the expression of pure reality. (Mondrians comment on Cubism and its limitation compared to De Stijl art, unsourced, ed.)

 

Franz Marc‘s artist quotes on Cubism

 

- What relation has a ‘doe’ to our picture of the world? Does it make any logical, or even artistic, sense, to paint the doe as it appears to our perspective vision, or in a Cubistic form because we feel the world cubistically? It feels it as a doe, and its landscape must also be “doe”…    … I can paint a picture: the roe; Pisanello (Italian master painter, ed.) has painted such. I can, however, also wish to paint a picture: “the roe feels.” How infinitely sharper an intellect must the painter have, in order to paint this! The Egyptians have done it. The rose; Manet has painted that. Who has painted the flowering rose? The Indians… (Munich 1911-1912).
* Franz Marc, artist quotes on painting animal and critical note on Cubism and other abstraction in art, from: ‘Aphorisms’, Franz Marc; as quoted in “Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries”, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 445

Marc Chagall‘s artist quotes on Cubism

 

– …No academy could have given me all I discovered by getting my teeth into the exhibitions, the shop windows, and the museums of Paris. Beginning with the market – where, for lack of money, I bought only a piece of a long cucumber – the workman in his blue overall, the most ardent followers of Cubism, everything showed a definite feeling for proportion, clarity, an accurate sense of form, of a more painterly kind of painting, even in the canvases of second-rate artists.
* Chagall’s quote on his relation with French Cubism in Paris: “My life”, Marc Chagall, 1922; as quoted in ‘Marc Chagall – the Russian years 1906 – 1922’, editor Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, p. 29

 

Chaim Soutine‘s artist quotes on Cubism

 

– I never touched Cubism myself, you know, although I was attracted by it one time. When I was painting at Céret and at Cagnes (1919 and since 1923, ed.) I yielded to its influence in spite of myself, and the results were not entirely banal. But then…   …Céret itself is anything but banal. There is so much foreshortening in the landscape that, for that very reason, a picture may seem to have been painted in some specific style (1927, ed.).
* artist quote by Chaim Soutine, on Cubism painting: “Life with the painters of La Ruche’’, Vorobëv Marevna, Macmillan, New York, 1972, p. 156

 

Malevich‘s artist quotes on Cubism

 

- We have rejected reason because we have found another reason that could be called transrational, which has its own law, construction and sense…  …This reason has found a way-Cubism-of expressing the object.
* Kasimir Malevich, his artist quotes on Suprematism, the Russian modern art style: a letter to the composer Matiushin, June 1913; as quoted in “Futurism”, ed. By Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 58 

 

- Dynamism is also the forming formula for Futurists works; i.e. dynamism is the additional element that transforms the perception of one state of phenomena to another, for example, from a static to a dynamic perception.
* Kazimir Malevich, artist quotes on Suprematism, the Russian modern art style: ‘Cubo-futurism’, Kasimir Malevich, in “Essays on Art”, op. cit., vol 2; as quoted in “Futurism”, ed. By Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 59

 

- By Suprematism, I mean the supremacy of pure feeling in the pictorial arts. From the suprematist point of view, the appearances of natural objects are in themselves meaningless; the essential thing is feeling – in itself and completely independent of the context in which it has been evoked. Academic naturalism, the naturalism of the impressionists, of Cézannism, (Malevich valued Cezanne’s art as a necessary but ‘provincial art’ in the long development of modern art, ed.) of Cubism, etc., are all so to speak nothing but dialectic methods, which in themselves in no way determine the true value of the work of art.
* Kazimir Malevich, artist quotes on Suprematism, the Russian modern art style:“Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries”, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 452.

 

 

Helen Frankenthaler‘s artist quotes on Cubism

 

– Total abstraction was something intellectual to me. I didn’t feel it; I could talk about Mondrian but it didn’t occur to me to do it. (around 1950, fh). I saw a Dubuffet show at Pierre Matisse (galleries, fh) in the late forties and came back with a new vocabulary. Also when Baziotes won the Carnegie (1948) there was a reproduction in the Times. I remember bringing it to class. It was source of bewilderment, delineated configurations that seemed to come out of Cubism. It was something new. Those were the tastes of a whole dimension that was to come, much more abstract and allover and I didn’t see much more of it until I came to New York.
* source of her artist quote on her relation to abstraction in painting, like Kandinsky did in his paintings, in a: ‘Interview with Helen Frankenthaler’, Henry Geldzahler;’Artforum’ 4. no. 2, October 1965, p. 36
- When you first saw a Cubist or Impressionist picture there was a whole way of instructing the eye of the subconscious. Dabs of color had to stand for real things; it was an abstraction of a guitar or of a hillside. The opposite is going on now. If you have bands of blue, green and pink, the mind doesn’t think sky, grass and flesh. These are colors and the question is what are they doing with themselves and with each other. Sentiment and nuance are being squeezed out so that if something is not altogether flatly painted then there might be a hint of edge, chiaroscuro, shadow and if one wants just that pure thing these associations get in the way.
* Frankenthaler, source of her woman artist quote in which she compares representation by Cubism / Impressionism art and the modern abstract art of her own time: Abstract Expressionism / Color Field, in a: ‘Interview with Helen Frankenthaler’, Henry Geldzahler; ’Artforum’ 4. no. 2, October 1965, p. 39

 

 

Arshile Gorky‘s artist quotes on Cubism

 

– They (the critics, fh) forget that while the artist never works outside his time yet his art will go on to be merged gradually into the new art of a new age. There will be no short stop. We shall not, contrary to the expectation of these people, hear of the sudden death of Cubism, abstraction, so-called modern art…   …they have merely not understood the spiritual movement and the law of direct energy of the centuries…   …if they could but realize that energy is a spiritual movement and that they must conceive of working under a law of universal aesthetic progress, as we do in science, in mathematics, in physics.
* Arshile Gorky, source of his artist quote on the art critics and energy in contemporary painting, in: ‘Stuart Davis’, Arshile Gorky, in ‘Creative Art 9′, September 1931; as quoted in “Arshile Gorky, – Goats on the roof”, ed. by Matthew Spender, Ridinghouse, London 2009

 

…it was the Cubist painters who created the new magic of space and color that everywhere today confronts our eyes in new architecture and design. Since then the various branches of modern art through exhaustive experiment and research have created a vast laboratory whose discoveries unveiled for all the secrets of form, line and color…
* artist quotes on the Cubist painters who created the new magic of space and color in modern painting, in: ‘Camouflage’, 1942; an announcement for a teaching program, (set up by Gorky and the director of the Grand Central School of Art, Edmund Greasen, fh).

 

- I was with Cezanne for a long time, and now naturally I am with Picasso.
* Arshile Gorky expresses his early admiration for Cezanne and later in his artistic life for the great Picasso, from: ‘Gorky Memorial Exhibition’, by Schwabacher p. 28; as quoted in ”Movements in art since 1945”, Edward Lucie-Smith, Thames and Hudson 1975, p. 31

 

 

Lee Krasner‘s her artist quotes on Cubism

 

– He (Hans Hofmann, one of her art teachers, ed.) would come up to me (circa 1937-38, ed.), look at my work, and do a critique half in English and half in German, but certainly nothing I could understand. When he left the room I would call George McNeil, who was then the monitor, over and I would ask: ’What did this man say to me?’ Hoffman was teaching Cubism and that was pretty exciting. Matisse and Picasso were my highlights. It was as though I was swinging between them. First I started to work with color (= Matisse, ed. ) and then there was a heavy swing toward the linear (= Picasso, ed. ).
* Lee Krasner, source of her woman artist quotes on painting, art and life with Jackson Pollock: “Art Talk, Conversations with 15 woman artists”, Cindy Nemser, 1975, Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 1995, p. 74

 

Willem de Kooning‘s artist quotes on Cubism

 

– The sentiment of the Cubists was simpler. No space. Everything ought to keep going! That’s probably the reason they went themselves. Either a man was a machine or else a sacrifice to make machines with… …Personally, I do not need a movement. Of all movements, I like Cubism most. It had that wonderful unsure atmosphere of reflection – a poetic frame where something could be possible, where an artist could practice his intuition. It didn’t want to get rid of what went before. Instead it added something to it. The parts that I can appreciate in other movements came out of Cubism… …It has force in it but it was no ‘force-movement’.
* Willem de Kooning, source of his artist quotes on painting art and life: De Kooning’s speech on the symposium, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 5 February, 1951

 

 

Marcel Duchamp‘s artist quotes on Cubism

 ‘People talk of Picasso as the leader of the Cubist but, strictly speaking, he is no longer a Cubist. Today he is a Cubist, tomorrow he will be something else. The only true Cubists are Gleizes and Metzinger.’
* Marcel Duchamp, artist quote on Cubism and Picasso, from ‘A complete reversal of opinions on art’, Marcel Duchamp, in ‘Art and Decoration, New York, 1 September 1915

 

 ‘My brother (the artists Duchamp-Villon, ed.) had a kitchen in his little house in Puteaux, and he had the idea of decorating it with pictures by his buddies. He asked Gleizes, Metzinger, La Fresnaye, and I think Leger (all Cubist painters, ed.) to do some little paintings of the same size, like a sort of frieze. He asked me too, and I painted a coffee grinder which I made to explode.’
(on his painting ‘Moulin a café’, 1911, many times reproduced from the lithography made for the 1947 re-edition of Gleizes and Metzingers book ‘Du Cubisme’, ed.)
* Duchamp, quote on the origin of his painting ‘Moulin a café’, in: ‘Entretiens avec Marcel Duchamp’, 1965; as quoted in “Futurism”, ed. By Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 198

 

Jasper John‘s artist quotes on Cubism

 

– Cubism is an anatomical chart of a way of seeing external objects. But I want to confuse the meaning of the act of looking.
* Jasper Johns, source of his artist quotes: ‘Jasper Johns in Tokyo’, Yoshiaki Tono, Tokyo August 1964; as quoted in “Jasper Johns, Writings, sketchbook Notes, Interviews”, ed. Kirk Varnedoe, MoMA New York, 1996, p. 104

 

Mark Rothko‘s artist quotes on Cubism

 

– Like the Cubists before them, the (American – after 1945, ed.) abstractionists felt a beautiful thing in perceiving how the medium can, of its own accord, carry one into the unknown, that is to the discovery of new structures. What an inspiration the medium is….
* Mark Rothko, source of artist quotes painter of the Sublime: ‘Beyond the Aesthetics’, Robert Motherwell, in ‘Design 47, no 8, April 1946, pp. 38-39