Georges Braque Art Quotations

Once an object has been incorporated in a picture it accepts a new destiny.

There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.

Painting is a nail to which I fasten my ideas.

To define a thing is to substitute the definition for the thing itself.

Truth exists; only lies are invented.

Art is a wound turned into light.

The painting is finished when the idea has disappeared.

Art is polymorphic. A picture appears to each onlooker under a different guise.

Art is made to trouble but science reassures.

The whole Renaissance tradition is antipethic 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 form the beholder instead of bringing them within his reach as painting should.

Limited means often constitute the charm and force of primitive painting. Extension, on the contrary, leads the arts to decadence.

Art is meant to disturb. Science reassures.

With age, art and life become one.

Nature is a mere pretext for a decorative composition, plus sentiment. It suggests emotion, and I translate that emotion into art.

Art upsets, science reasures.

To explain away the mystery of a great painting - if such a feat were possible - would do irreparable harm... If there is no mystery, then there is no poetry, the quality I value above all else in art.

One has to guard against a formula that is good for everything, that can interpret reality in addition to the other arts, and that rather than creating can only result in a style, or a stylization.

Progress in art does not consist in reducing limitations, but in knowing them better.

In art, progress lies not in an extension, but in a knowledge of limitations.

The starting point of a picture for any painter is a matter of colors and form...I believe that the poetry of art - if that is what one may call it - is a matter of animating these forms and colors.

The function of Art is to disturb. Science reassures.

Art disturbs, science reassures.

In art there is only one thing that counts: the bit that cannot be explained.

One day I noticed that I could go on working my art motif no matter what the weather might be. I no longer needed the sun, for I took my light everywhere with me.

I couldn't portray a women in all her natural loveliness.. I haven't the skill. No one has. I must, therefore, create a new sort of beauty, the beauty that appears to me in terms of volume of line, of mass, of weight, and through that beauty interpret my subjective impression. Nature is mere a pretext for decorative composition, plus sentiment. It suggests emotion, and I translate that emotion into art. I want to express the absolute, not merely the factitious woman.