Pablo Picasso Quotations | Page 2

If i wanted to become a monk, I would have ultimately become the Bishop.If i wanted to become a soldier, I would ultimately become the General, but because I wanted to become a painter, i became Picasso.

Why do you try to understand art? Do you try to understand the song of a bird?

Sex and art are the same thing.

Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.

Sculpture is the art of the intelligence.

Painting is not made to decorate apartments. It's an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy. (about Guernica).

Without great solitude no serious work is possible.

Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.

Art is a finger up the bourgeoisie ass.

If I paint a wild horse, you might not see the horse... but surely you will see the wildness!

Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.

We are all born children- the trick is remaining one.

Manifesting takes place from Spirit. It doesn't take place from form, from the physical world. You've got to know that what you want to manifest will occur.

You must always work not just within but below your means. If you can handle three elements, handle only two. If you can handle ten, then handle only five. In that way the ones you do handle, you handle with more ease, more mastery, and you create a feeling of strength in reserve.

...why did Plato say that poets should be chased out of the republic? Precisely because every poet and every artist is an antisocial being. He's not that way because he wants to be; he can't be any other way.... and if he really is an artist it is in his nature not to want to be admitted, because if he is admitted it can only mean he is doing something which is understood, approved, and therefore old hat - worthless. Anything new, anything worth doing, can't be recognized.

It is important to remember that great things have no fear of time. We've got to let go of the idea that what we want to manifest has to be done on our time schedule.

...art is something subversive. It's something that should not be free. Art and liberty, like the fire of Prometheus, are things that one must steal, to be used against the established order.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.

Titian, Rembrandt and Goya were the great painters. I am only a public clown.

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist while still achieving milestones and outcomes as required by certain funders and policy-makers.

We now know that Art is not the truth... but rather a way of approaching the truth.

Music and art are the guiding lights of the world.

Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.

Good artists copy, great artists steal.

I don't say everything, but I paint everything.

Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world, though we can't explain them. People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.

What I capture in spite of myself interests me more than my own ideas.

When I haven't any blue I use red.

The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.

When German soldiers used to come to my studio and look at my pictures of Guernica, they'd ask 'Did you do this?'. And I'd say, 'No, you did.'

To blossom forth, a work of art must ignore or rather forget all the rules.

When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.

Photographers, along with dentists, are the two professions never satisfied with what they do. Every dentist would like to be a doctor and inside every photographer is a painter trying to get out.

Youth has no age.

To know what you're going to draw, you have to begin drawing.

I don't work from nature, I work like nature.

When I was a kid I drew like Michelangelo. It took me years to learn to draw like a kid.

What one does is what counts. Not what one had the intention of doing.

Everything you can imagine is real.

It took me a lifetime.

Critics, mathematicians, scientists and busybodies want to classify everything, marking the boundaries and limits... In art, there is room for all possibilities.

There's nothing so similar to one poodle dog as another poodle dog, and that goes for women, too.

All things considered, there is only Matisse.

If you know exactly what you're going to do, what's the good in doing it?

Unless your work gives you trouble, it is no good.

Drawing is a kind of hypnotism: one looks in such a way at the model, that he comes and takes a seat on the paper.

People want to find a meaning in everything and everyone. That's the disease of our age...

The people no longer seek consolation in art. But the refined people, the rich, the idlers seek the new, the extraordinary, the extravagant, the scandalous. I have contented these people with all the many bizarre things that come into my head. And the less they understand, the more they admire it. By amusing myself with all these games, all this nonsense, all these picture puzzles, I became famous... I am only a public entertainer who has understood his time.

What I want is that my picture should evoke nothing but emotion.

In every photographer there was a painter, a true artist, awaiting expression.

Beauty? To me it is a word without sense because I do not know where its meaning comes from nor where it leads to.

If it's good, it's mine. If it's bad, it's a fake.

What do you think an artist is An imbecile who has only his eyes if he is a painter, or his ears if he is a musician, or a lyre at every level of his heart if he is a poet, or, if he is merely a boxer, only his muscle On the contrary, he is at the same time a political being, constantly alert to the heartrending, burning, or happy events in the world, molding himself in their likeness.

There's nothing more difficult than a line.

When the individuality of the artist begins to express itself, what the artist gains in the way of liberty he loses in the way of order.

What does it mean for a painter to paint in the manner of So-and-So or to actually imitate someone else? What's wrong with that? On the contrary, it's a good idea. You should constantly try to paint like someone else. But the thing is, you can't! You would like to. You try. But it turns out to be a botch... And it's at the very moment you make a botch of it that you're yourself.

A picture is not thought out and settled beforehand. While it is being done it changes as one's thoughts change.

Action is the foundation of all success.

Through education comes understanding. Through understanding comes true appreciation. All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.

When we discovered cubism, we did not have the aim of discovering cubism. We only wanted to express what was in us.

Different themes inevitably require different methods of expression. This does not imply either evolution or progress; it is a matter of following the idea one wants to express and the way in which one wants to express it.

I do not seek. I find.

One never knows what one is going to do. One starts a painting and then it becomes something quite different.

The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.

It's always necessary to seek for perfection. Obviously, for us, this word no longer has the same meaning. To me, it means: from one canvas to the next, always go further, further...

It isn't up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them.

If you don't know what color to take, take black.....

The important thing is to create. Nothing else matters; creation is all.

A painting is not thought out in advance. While it is being done, it changes as one’s thoughts change. And when it’s finished, it goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it

You mustn't expect me to repeat myself. My past doesn't interest me. I would rather copy others than copy myself. In that way I should at least be giving them something new. I love discovering things.

I would like to manage to prevent people from ever seeing how a picture of mine has been done. What can it possibly matter? What I want is that the only thing emanating from my pictures should be emotion.

When I enter the studio, I leave my body at the door the way the Moslems leave their shoes when they enter the mosque, and I only allow my spirit to go in there and paint.

When you see what you express through photography, you realize all the things that can no longer be the objectives of painting. Why should an artist persist in treating subjects that can be established so clearly with the lens of a camera?

Imitators? All right! Disciples if you like. But disciples be damned. It's not interesting.

The academic teaching on beauty is false. We have been misled, but so completely misled that we can no longer find so much as a shadow of a truth again. The beauties of the Parthenon, the Venuses, the Nymphs, the Narcisusses, are so may lies. Art is not the application of a canon of beauty, but what the instinct and the brain can conceive independently of that canon.

When we did Cubist paintings, 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 followed our endeavour attentively but they never dictated it to us.

We don't grow older, we grow riper.

Something sacred, that's it. We ought to be able to say that such and such a painting is as it is, with its capacity for power, because it is "touched by God."

I draw like other people bite their nails.

By amusing myself with all these games, all this nonsense, all these picture puzzles, I became famous... I am only a public entertainer who has understood his time.

Good taste is the enemy of creativity.

I paint the way someone bites his fingernails; for me, painting is a bad habit because I don't know nor can I do anything else.

The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.

I am only a public entertainer who understands his time.

Good designers copy; great designers steal.

It is personality with a penny's worth of talent. Error which chances to rise above the commonplace.

Cubism is not a reality you can take in your hand. It's more like a perfume, in front of you, behind you, to the sides, the scent is everywhere but you don’t quite know where it comes from.

I who have been involved with all styles of painting can assure you that the only things that fluctuate are the waves of fashion which carry the snobs and speculators; the number of true connoisseurs remains more or less the same.

If I spit, they will take my spit and frame it as great art.

Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing?

Everyone wants to understand art. Why don't we try to understand the song of a bird? Why do we love the night, the flowers, everything around us, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting, people think they have to understand.

For me, there are two kinds of women - goddesses and doormats.

You can go to the moon or walk under the sea, or anything else you like, but painting remains painting because it eludes such investigation. It remains there like a question. And it alone gives the answer.

There is only one way to see things, until someone shows us how to look at them with different eyes

You can't run a without taking risks.

Whether he wants it or not, man is the instrument of nature; she imposes on him character and appearance.

And fame, for a painter means sales, gains, fortune, riches. And today, as you know, I am celebrated. I am rich.

Basically the French are all peasants.

As an artist, all I need is my paints and brushes - and someone to drag me away when the canvas is done

I do things I don't know how to do in order to learn how to do them.