Georges Braque - Art Quotes

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

Georges Braque
I started to introduce letters into my pictures [his first collage art]. These were forms which could not be deformed, because, being two-dimensional, they existed outside three-dimensional space; their inclusion in a picture allowed a distinction to be made between objects which were situated in space and those which belonged outside space [the letters].

Georges Braque
Color came into its own with papiers collés.... with these works we [Braque, and a little later Picasso started to make 'collage art'] succeeded in dissociating color from form, in putting it on a footing independent of form, for that was the crux of the matter. Color acts simultaneously with form, but has nothing to do with form.

Georges Braque
One must beware of a formula good for everything, that will serve to interpret the other arts as well as reality, and that instead of creating will only produce a style, or rather a stylization.

Georges Braque
The only valid thing in art is that which cannot be explained. To explain away the mystery of a great painting – if such a feat were possible – would be irreparable harm... If there is no mystery than there is no 'poetry', the quality I value above all else in art. What do I mean by 'poetry'? It is to a painting what life is to man... For me it is a matter of harmony, of rapports, of rhythm and – most important for my own work – of 'metamorphosis'

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

Georges Braque
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.

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

Georges Braque
In art there is only one thing that counts; the thing you can't explain.

Georges Braque
The whole Renaissance tradition is antipathic 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; Cézanne 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.

Georges Braque
In art progress consists not in extension but in the knowledge of its limits.

Georges Braque
In art progress does not consist in extension, but in the knowledge of limits.

Georges Braque
The arts which achieve their effect through purity have never been arts that were good for everything. Greek sculpture (among others) with its decadence, teaches us this.

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

Georges Braque