Kenneth Clark Quotes

Elizabeth Peyton, the artist known for tiny, dazzling portraits of radiant youth, is now painting tiny, dazzling portraits of radiant middle age.

We are the two great painters of this era; you are in the Egyptian style, I in themodern style. (to Pablo Picasso)

Is there a necessary succession in style, or are these things pure chance?

I had my first exhibition in September, 2012. This was when I first introduced the public to my style of the incorporation of cloth in my paintings. It was well received and everyone was fascinated with the work on display. I also invited other young aspiring artist to display they work which was also well received.

With age, art and life become one.

What is art? A violet. Is that all? An artistic style is a living entity, a continuous process of invention. It can never be imposed from without; born of the profoundest tendencies within a society, its direction is to a certain extent unpredictable, in much the same way as the eventual configuration of a tree's branches.

I've changed my style constantly, so I'm not sure I have one defined style, except perhaps style of subject matter. But you learn as you go, I suppose.

It is much to my advantage that several of my pictures should be seen together, as it displays to advantage their varieties of conception and also of execution, and what they gain by the mellowing hand of time which should never be forced or anticipated. Thus my pictures when first coming forth have a comparative harshness which at the time acts to my disadvantage.

I who have been involved with all styles of painting can assure you that the only things that fluctuate are the waves of fashion which carry the snobs and speculators; the number of true connoisseurs remains more or less the same.

As an artist, you take things from your environment, and there's going to be a style coming out of your environment.

Every paint-stroke takes you farther and farther away from your initial concept. And you have to be thankful for that.

I achieved perfection, my type of perfection - visual storytelling. Storytelling was my style.

I wish I could be more serious about painting. I think there may be something going on there and I should pursue it. I'm very old-fashioned - even with the music. I realize, while I have so much respect for the kookiness of people who go for it, who paint with their eyes closed, I am superclassical.

I don't even consider myself an impressionist, really.

I've never claimed that this is investment art. When we first started out, all the art colleges and universities across the country would sort of badmouth what we were doing. It's funny that a lot of them now are sending us letters saying, 'We may not totally agree with the way you paint, but we appreciate what you're doing, because you're sending literally thousands of people into art colleges.'

I create my subjects somehow visualizing them in my style. I start as a poet, put the colors and composition down on canvas as a painter, but finish my work as a sculptor taking delight in caressing the forms.

Recently, the Germans have developed a tendency to prefer the so-called first (youthful) style of great artists to their mature works. Could it be that they do not realize that their aesthetic criteria, generally speaking, are juvenile?

I've never been a representational artist at all. Most artists have been representational. That's when you discover yourself.

I thought some of my earlier cartoons were not exactly great shakes at the time I drew them. Now I see a certain innocence in them. The humor has a kind of purity to it, I guess. And it works better on some level for me now.

A strange thing has happened - while all the other arts were born naked, this, the youngest, has been born fully-clothed. It can say everything before it has anything to say. It is as if the savage tribe, instead of finding two bars of iron to play with, had found scattering the seashore fiddles, flutes, saxophones, trumpets, grand pianos by Erhard and Bechstein, and had begun with incredible energy, but without knowing a note of music, to hammer and thump upon them all at the same time.

A viewer as opposed to a filmmaker might see a film differently. But I'm extremely comfortable with my style.

Perhaps I was born too early. I was more the painter of your generation than of mine.

That's what I mean by something grips in a canvas. The moment that happens you are then sucked into the whole thing. Like some kind of rhythm.

Mannerism is always longing to have done, and has no true enjoyment in work. A genuine, really great talent, on the other hand, has its greatest happiness in execution.

There's a Chinese proverb that says it all: Painting is an old man's art.