Bram van Velde Quotes

80 Sourced Quotes

They make you and you have no say in it. It's Godot all the time. A chain around your neck and the whip cracking behind you.

Bram van Velde
You are in an area where knowledge fails. Where you have to advance in ignorance, not even knowing where you are going.

Bram van Velde
There's always doubt. There's nothing you can get hold of.

Bram van Velde
When you cross any border there is always an uneasy moment when you feel yourself automatically an enemy. Artists don't belong to any group or country... When you are living the truth, the world no longer exists, events become unimportant. But the way of truth is not easy.... if you are on the side of truth, you have no power. That's why you are always defeated. The power, all the power, is on the side of the world... I have been completely absorbed in my adventure. No country, no family, no ties. I didn't exist anymore. I just had to press on.

Bram van Velde
I am in a thousand pieces. Painting somehow makes me whole.

Bram van Velde
Yes, I abandoned everything. Painting required it. It was all or nothing.

Bram van Velde
Mondrian... The constructivists?... They had certainties. They wanted a stable basis to work on, but I'm afraid that that was enormous arrogance on their part. Nothing is stable and no certainties are possible.

Bram van Velde
The world of architecture – and of works conceived for architecture – tends towards beauty. True beauty tends towards ugliness and panic.

Bram van Velde
My work is independent of my will. My best works are created when driven by an inner strength. This has nothing to do with my will. It is that immediate spontaneity of my intense way of living that makes the difference between my work and a lot of other artists who make art works with their mind.

Bram van Velde
A painter is somebody who sees. I paint the moment when I set out. When I set out to see. And it's the same thing for the viewer. When he approaches the canvas, he is advancing towards an encounter. The encounter with vision.

Bram van Velde
Painting is an aid to vision. It turns life, the complexity of life, into something visible. It reveals things that we don't know how to see.

Bram van Velde
Artists don't live in the everyday world. That's why people think they're an odd bunch.

Bram van Velde
Yes, perhaps there is some enjoyment in it [his paintings] too, somewhere.

Bram van Velde
There's a perpetual duel going on between the world of the spirit and the world of things. Although the one only has meaning in relation to the other.

Bram van Velde
A painting is not a battle against other people, but against oneself.

Bram van Velde
Van Gogh... Fascinating. The fragility of that strong spirit.

Bram van Velde
Oh Baudelaire... He used to be enormously important to me. It's thanks to him that I was able to get through the war [in Paris, during 1940 – 1945 Van Velde had a long and painful break, with only a few paintings he finished]. A true loyal mind without hypocrisy. The most universal spirit. The greatest Frenchman. I have always been much less interested in painters [than Baudelaire - a great surprise to hear for Charles Juliet the interviewer].

Bram van Velde
Through painting I try to get closer to nothingness, to the void.

Bram van Velde
Each of my paintings is a cycle. It's like existence, life. They are always in motion... If they were fixed and static, they would be false.

Bram van Velde
Life and mind are continuously in conflict with each other. I want happiness, security. I won't reach that by considerations of my mind; on the contrary they will lead to a certain despair of the inner person. Not what he thinks engages the artist, but what he feels.

Bram van Velde