Andre Malraux Artist Quotations

The crucial discovery was made that, in order to become painting, the universe seen by the artist had to become a private one created by himself.

In so far as he is a creator, the artist does not belong to a social group already moulded by a culture, but to a culture which he is by way of building up.

Every young man's heart is a graveyard in which are inscribed the names of a thousand dead artists but whose only actual denizens are a few mighty, often antagonistic, ghosts.

The thrill of creation which we experience which we experience when we see a masterpiece is not unlike the feeling of the artist who created it; such a work is a fragment of the world which he has annexed and which belongs to him alone.

As for the outside world, the artist is confronted by what he sees; but what he sees is primarily what he looks at.

The ordinary man puts up a struggle against all that is not himself, whereas it is against himself, in a limited but all-essential field, that the artist has to battle.

An artist discovers his genius the day he dares not to please.

The artist is not the transcriber of the world, he is its rival.

If modern painters feel qualms about applying the term "masterpiece" to describe a work of capital importance, this is because it has come to convey a notion of perfection: a notion that leads to much confusion when applied to artists other than those who made perfection their ideal.