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Bram van Velde Quotes
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Painting is an eye, a blinded eye that continues to see, and sees what blinds it.... this tiny little thing, which is nothing, which dominates life.
Bram van Velde
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Van Gogh... In this world of petty calculations, he was too intense. He frightened people. They cast him out.
Bram van Velde
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Art is not for the personal satisfaction of one or the other, but art wants to return all what's in life... Art wants to give back everything what's in our lives. The more comprehensive the artist stands in life the more powerful his work will speak, and therefore a work of art is a measure of the mental size of his creator.
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It is true that other people can help you, and to lasting effect... If I hadn't had Beckett in 1940 [in Paris, when Van Velde was strongly demoralized by the death of his wife], I'm not sure I could have stood it. I am really not sure... At that time he [Beckett] he was driven by an extremely aggressive and fiery Irish spirit. That has lessened as time has gone on... I don't know anywhere in modern art any more faithful or more impressive picture of contemporary humanity than the one he offers us in 'The Unamable'.
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I feel myself tied to life. To the immensity and complexity of life. Each painting is an impulse towards life.
Bram van Velde
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Everyone cheats. Only artists don't. They don't fool people and they aren't fooled. They are outside all that. Nobody can understand them.
Bram van Velde
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At is taking risks.... a sincere attempt to achieve the impossible, the unknown.
Bram van Velde
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In this world that destroys me, the only thing that I can do is to live my weakness. That weakness is my only strength.
Bram van Velde
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Painting is so stupid, so simple. I paint to get out of the through. I paint my misery.
Bram van Velde
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I start off on the canvas and, little by little, it imposes its own solution. But that solution is not easy to find.
Bram van Velde
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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
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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
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There's always doubt. There's nothing you can get hold of.
Bram van Velde
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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
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I am in a thousand pieces. Painting somehow makes me whole.
Bram van Velde
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Yes, I abandoned everything. Painting required it. It was all or nothing.
Bram van Velde
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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.
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The world of architecture – and of works conceived for architecture – tends towards beauty. True beauty tends towards ugliness and panic.
Bram van Velde
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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
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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.
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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
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Artists don't live in the everyday world. That's why people think they're an odd bunch.
Bram van Velde
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Yes, perhaps there is some enjoyment in it [his paintings] too, somewhere.
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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.
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A painting is not a battle against other people, but against oneself.
Bram van Velde
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Quote of the day
No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love.
Edvard Munch
Bram van Velde
Creative Commons
Born:
October 19, 1895
Died:
December 28, 1981
(aged 86)
Bio:
Bram van Velde was a Dutch painter known for an intensely colored and geometric semi-representational painting style related to Tachisme, and Lyrical Abstraction.
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