Search the Archive

"links to a selection of essay-texts, written by de Chirico"

"Two men dressed in white jeans with white caps on their heads.. ..climbing over a large sign of white letters. Of course, the words spell something, but that is unimportant. What is important is their…"

"You misunderstood my words when I said that Michelangelo was a stupid artist.. .Because I have drunk from another source and a new and marvelous thirst burns my lips – how can I still believe in such …"

"I think every once in a while I feel the need to break my medium.. .if I have been doing a very large painting I like to drop into something in small scale. It is a challenge to go into this size. It …"

"Every artist's problem today is: What will we do with the human?"

"At a time when experimentation expresses itself in all forms of life, search becomes the only valid expression of the spirit."

"And then the spring of '48 I toddled off to Paris on a Liberty ship.. .Yes, and arriving in Le Havre on that Liberty ship and seeing all those—the sun was coming up—and seeing all those ships sunk.. I…"

"White lines in movement symbolize a unifying idea which flows through the compartmented units of life bringing the consciousness of a larger relativity."

"It is quite a narrow studio , I can never see a big four-panel all at once.. ..I can see two big panels. That’s about all.. .I had an awful lot going on at once, going back and forth. I turn to a wall…"

"Well, I once wrote in - it's in Joan Mitchell Paints a Picture, as I remember, Irving Sandler, a long time ago, that I hated the word 'Nature' with a capital 'N.'.. .But now I accept it, I suppose. I …"

"They are the next generation and it is another scene, another story. You forget that in my generation Paris was still the leading school of painting and this situation was being changed by a tiny hand…"

"I think my painting is so autobiographical if anyone can take the trouble to read it."

"My first lesson in relativity: ..we had a still life set-up to paint. Suddenly I saw that the pitcher was so big and the glass was so big. From that time on everything was all right."

"I was quite active politically just previous to this, and I'm leading into this time when I was on WPA and there was a group called the Artist's Union which was organized, so that I was extremely acti…"

"Oral history interview with Lee Krasner, 1972, conducted by Dolores Holmesn"

"An artist must find his expression closely linked to his individual experience or else follow in the old grooves resulting in lifeless forms."

".. the feeling in a line of poetry which makes it different from, a line of prose.. .Sentimentality is self-pity, your own swamp. Weeping in your own beer is not a feeling. It lacks dignity and hasn't…"

"Oral history interview with Lee Krasner, 1964 Nov. 2-1968 Apr. 11"

"Reality must be expressed by a physical symbol."

"In 1946 what I call my 'Little Image' began breaking through this gray matter of mine. I felt fantastic relief that something was beginning to happen after all this time when there was nothing, nothin…"

"I've have tried to take from everybody .. .I can't close my eyes or limit my experiences.. .Because I live now, I am more interested in art now. It's different as any art is different from period to p…"

"And the first studio I went to .. .I was trying to find de Kooning because he had a painting at the Whitney, which was in the old Studio School , you know.. .And I thought I would like to know him. I …"

"Without getting complicated let me recapitulate my art training in the following way: the Academy first, the break with the Academy when I hit the Hofmann School which is Cubist. The next real break f…"

"..the flat surface of a perfectly calm ocean disturbs us.. ..by all the unknown that is hidden in the depth."

"Right up until today Pollock well takes a lot of mine time.. ..and while you ask 'How much did it take out of me as a creative artist', I ask simultaneously, 'What did it give?' It is a two-way affair…"

"Painting is the magic art, the fire set alight on the windows of the rich dwelling, as on those of the humble hovel, from the last rays of the setting sun, it is the long mark, the humid mark, the flu…"

"It is most important that we should rid art of all that it has contained of ‘recognizable material’ to date, all familiar subject matter, all traditional ideas, all popular symbols must be banished fo…"

"I started in, got it in summer of 67, Yeah, well, and then I started.. .I was still painting at Fremicourt and I remember starting the 'Sunflowers' , which I saw in Vetheuil and painted them in Fremic…"

"Perfect knowledge of the space an object should occupy in a picture, and of the space that separates one object from another, establishes a new astronomy of things attached to our planet by the magic …"

"I exhibited three paintings at the Salon d'Automne exhibition , which is the most interesting exhibition I have seen until now. Much more interesting than the Secession . My paintings were noticed and…"

"I'm not so sure I could have done otherwise, but I wish I.. .I'm re-going to a French shrink now, and she's helped me a lot. I wish I'd gone sooner, because I think women are inclined more than men to…"

"He would come up to me , 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…"

"When I came back and heard you play with Charles Mingus, and when you and Cecil Taylor opened up the 'Five Spot' in the Fall of 1956, I felt better about being in New York. All the musicians who creat…"

"I remember one vivid winter’s day at Versailles. Silence and calm reigned supreme,. Everything gazed at me with mysterious, questioning eyes. And then I realized that every corner of the palace, every…"

"I'm not religious or anything like that. a little more spiritual something or other.. .A little more 'feeling'. And there's my word again. You know?.. .And I find that.. .., I find that uninspiring, a…"

"Our ground today is not so much the national or the regional ground as it is the understanding of this single earth. The earth has been round for some time now, but not in man’s relation to man, nor i…"

"We look at the mountain to see the painting, then we look at the painting to see the mountain."

"On the third floor of Manning's Coffee Shop in the Farmer's Market in Seattle confronting the Sound, the windows are opaque with fog. Sitting here in the long deserted room, I feel suspended enveloped…"

"Oh, early Kandinsky.. .Well no, they had that at the Art Institute in Chicago, don't forget. See, everybody, to do 'modern art' then , seemed to me, when you were going 'modern' , it was Picasso. I me…"

"We have tried to fit man into abstraction, but he does not fit."

"Everything has two aspects: the current aspect, which we see nearly always and which ordinary men see, and the ghostly and metaphysical aspect, which only rare individuals may see in moments of clairv…"

"complete text of the Oral History interview with Joan Mitchell, 1986 Apr. 16 by Linda Nochlin - including sound excerpts"

"It's death. It's hospitals. It's my terrible nurses. You can add in Melville, Moby Dick a chapter on white. White is absolute horror. It is just the worst."

"England collapses, turns Chinese with English and American thoughts. Thousands of Chinese characters are turning and twisting; every door is a shop. The rickshaws jostle the vendors, their backs hung …"

"I'm trying to remember what I felt about a certain cypress tree and I feel if I remember it, it will last me quite a long life."

"Dear Mr. Rosenberg , - Many thanks for your good letters which are a great encouragement to me. I assure you that you are the man who has encouraged me the most so far. Please excuse the tone of decla…"

"Well I think it does suggest hieroglyphics of some sort. It is a preoccupation of mine from way back and every once in a while it comes into my work again. For instance in my 1968 show at the Marlboro…"

"Elaine Elaine de Kooning, Mercedes Matter.. .Well May Rosenberg, but she wasn't a painter. Jane Freilicher. Nell Blaine.. .Well, there were Grace and Helen , of course.. .How did I feel, like how? I f…"

"The structure of cities, the architecture of houses, squares, gardens, public walks, gateways, railway stations, etc – all these provide us with the basic principles of a great Metaphysical aesthetic.…"

"circa 200 images of paintings by Giorgio de Chirico"

"Pop Art, Op Art, Flop Art and Slop Art.. .I fall into the last two categories ."

"There has been 32 isms since the advent of Cubism, yet after all there are essentially the same two old strings, the Romantic and the Classical. We've just be confused by the storm. Science and psycho…"

"My recollection of meeting him outside of this one incident, was at a show that John Graham did at the MacMillin Gallery . He invited someone called Jackson Pollock and myself, and, I believe, de Koon…"

"I took a trip to Florence and Rome in October and in the spring I will probably go to Florence to live as it is the city I like the most. I have been working and studying a lot and I now have very dif…"

"Light is something very special. It has nothing to do with white. Either you see it or you don't. de la Tour doesn't have light; Monet hasn't any light. Matisse, Goya, Chardin, Van Gogh, Sam Francis, …"

"I've always been told that I was a painter's painter.. .What does that mean?.. .That painters like my painting and the big wide world overlooks it, I suppose?.. .Well, I know.. .To me, it would have m…"

"I have many ideas for lights. I will paint only lights at night."

"We all feel a separateness; we wish that a drop of water would soften our ego; the world needs a common conscience: agreement.. ..we must concentrate outside ourselves."

"Now it seems to me that we are in a universalising period.. .If we are to have world peace, we should have an understanding of all the idioms of beauty because the members of humanity who have created…"

"It is Fall. The leaves are being raked under the great elms darkening in the evening light. Slowly they become weighted with darkness. Across the river they are burning the grass on the Minnesota bluf…"