Robert Henri - Art Quotes

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Good composition is like a suspension bridge; each line adds strength and takes none away... Making lines run into each other is not composition. There must be motive for the connection. Get the art of controlling the observer – that is composition.

Robert Henri
The work of the art student is no light matter. Few have the courage and stamina to think it through. You have to make up your mind to be alone in many ways. We like sympathy and we like to be in company. It is easier than going it alone. But alone one gets acquainted with himself, grows up and on, not stopping with the crowd. It costs to do this. If you succeed somewhat you may have to pay for it as well as enjoy it all your life.

Robert Henri
Through art mysterious bonds of understanding and of knowledge are established among men.

Robert Henri
Through art, mysterious bonds of understanding and of knowledge are established among men. They are the bonds of a great Brotherhood. Those who are of the Brotherhood know each other, and time and space cannot separate them.

Robert Henri
There are people who buy pictures because they were difficult to do, and are done. Such pictures are often only a record of pain and dull perseverance. Great works of art should look as though they were made in joy. Real joy is a tremendous activity, dull drudgery is nothing to it.

Robert Henri
No work of Art is really ever finished. They only stop at good places.

Robert Henri
Each man must take the material that he finds at hand, see that in it there are the big truths of life, the fundamentally big forces, and then express in his art whatever is the cause of his pleasure.

Robert Henri
All manifestations of art are but landmarks in the progress of the human spirit toward a thing but as yet sensed and far from being possessed.

Robert Henri
Art is certainly not a pursuit for anyone who wants to make money.

Robert Henri
Perhaps whatever there is in my work that may be really interesting to others and surely what is interesting to me, is the result of a sometimes successful effort to free myself from any idea that what I produce must be art...

Robert Henri
Art when really understood is the province of every human being. It is simply a question of doing things, anything, well. It is not an outside, extra thing.

Robert Henri
The only sensible way to regard the art life is that it is a privilege you are willing to pay for... You may cite honors and attentions and even money paid, but I would have you note that these were paid a long time after the creator had gone through his struggles.

Robert Henri
Art appreciation, like love, cannot be done by proxy: It is a very personal affair and is necessary to each individual.

Robert Henri
Art is the giving by each man of his evidence to the world. Those who wish to give, love to give, discover the pleasure of giving. Those who give are tremendously strong.

Robert Henri
It is harder to see than it is to express. The whole value of art rests in the artist's ability to see well into what is before him.

Robert Henri
No nation as yet is the home of art. Art is an outsider, a gypsy over the face of the earth.

Robert Henri
In every human being there is the artist, and whatever his activity, he has an equal chance with any to express the result of his growth and his contact with life. I don't believe any real artist cares whether what he does is 'art' or not. Who, after all, knows what art is?

Robert Henri
After all, the goal is not making art. It is living a life. Those who live their lives will leave the stuff that is really art.

Robert Henri
Art is, after all, only a trace—like a footprint which shows that one has walked bravely and in great happiness.

Robert Henri
A work of art is the trace of a magnificent struggle.

Robert Henri
Art need not be intended. It comes inevitably as the tree from the root, the branch from the trunk, the blossom from the twig. None of these forget the present in looking backward or forward. They are occupied wholly with the fulfillment of their own existence.

Robert Henri
The object, which is back of every true work of art, is the attainment of a state of being, a state of high functioning, a more than ordinary moment of existence. In such moments activity is inevitable, and whether this activity is with brush, pen, chisel, or tongue, its result is but a by-product of the state, a trace, the footprint of the state.

Robert Henri
In great art there is no beginning and end in point of time. All time is comprehended.

Robert Henri
The man who has honesty, integrity, the love of inquiry, the desire to see beyond, is ready to appreciate good art.

Robert Henri