"integral text of Edward Hopper's 'Notes on Painting', for his first retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art."

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“The domination of France in the plastic arts has been almost complete for the last thirty years or more in this country . If an apprenticeship to a master has been necessary, I think we have served it. Any further relation of such a character can only mean humiliation to us. After all, we are not French and never can be, and any attempt to be so is to deny our inheritance and to try to impose upon ourselves a character that can be nothing but a veneer upon the surface.”

“The only quality that endures in art is a personal vision of the world. Methods are transient: personality is enduring.”

“The technical obstacles of painting perhaps dictate this form. It derives also from the limitations of personality, and such may be the simplifications that I have attempted.”

“All I ever wanted to do is to paint sunlight on the side of a wall.”

“It is hard for me to know what to paint. It comes slowly.”

“I do not know why I chose one subject rather than another unless I believe them to be the best synthesis of my inner experience.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Critics of visual arts and of music describe in words — that is to say, a system of signs other than those made by brushes on canvas or chisels into stone or notes of music — those characteristics of …"

— Stephen Spender

Literature1909–1995

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"Tutankhamun: Anatomy of an Excavation – from the Griffith Institute website, Howard Carter's records of the excavations, financed by Lord Carnarvon, in the Valley of the Kings."

— Howard Carter

1874–1939

#art

"If we really came to a position in which we could no longer produce the grain which we must necessarily consume, then in what state would we be if in wartime we had no Russian grain imports and perhap…"

— Otto von Bismarck

Politics

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"Art itself cannot be taught, but craftsmanship can. Architects, painters, sculptors are all craftsmen in the original sense of the word. Thus it is a fundamental requirement of all artistic creativity…"

— Walter Gropius

Education1883–1969

#art