Georges Braque - Work Quotes

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Whatever is in common is true; but likeness is false. Trouillebert's work bears a likeness to that of Corot, but they have nothing in common.

Georges Braque
There are certain mysteries, certain secrets in my own work, which even I don't understand, nor do I try to do so.... Critics should help people see for themselves; they should never try to define things, or impose their own explanations, though I admit that if – as nearly always happens – a critic's explanations serve to increase the general obscurity that's all to the good. French poets are particularly helpful in this respect.

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
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
Emotion should not be rendered by an excited trembling; it can neither be added on nor be imitated. It is the seed, the work is the flower.

Georges Braque
I am always working on a number of canvases at one time, eight, ten.... I take years to finish them, but I look at them each day... You see the advantage of not working from real life – the apples would be rotten long before I completed my canvas... I find that it is important to work slowly. Anyone who looks at such a canvas will follow the same path the artist took, and he will experience that it is the path which counts more than the outcome of it, and that the route taken has been the most interesting part.

Georges Braque
Work to perfect the mind. There is no certitude but in what the mind conceives.

Georges Braque