Henri Matisse Quotes

Painting is a language which cannot be replaced by another language. I don't know what to say about what I paint, really.

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.

I prefer to leave the paintings to speak for themselves.

Painting is but another word for feeling.

Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.

Drawing is still basically the same as it has been since prehistoric times. It brings together man and the world. It lives through magic.

I have to experiment with methods and I'm trying to find an authentic way of making an equivalent of the living, breathing person within the limits of a single picture.

I think all art - if it's good - is a result of really trying to create something that you can't put into words. Where language ends is where good art begins.

Abstract art was the quivalent of poetic expression; I didn’t need to use words,but colors and lines. I didn’t need to belong to a language-oriented culture but to an open form of expression.

Painting is as close as a person can get to actually capturing the heat of the moment.

Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation.

A drawing is essentially a private work, related only to the artist's own needs; a 'finished' statue or canvas is essentially a public, presented work - related far more directly to the demands of communication.

The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art.

Art is not a thing; it is a way.

I will preach with my brush.

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.

Pop Art looks out into the world. It doesn't look like a painting of something, it looks like the thing itself.

I think when somebody's painting they don't necessarily... I'm not illustrating what I know. I'm mapping out, like topographically, some terrain I am satisfied with, how awkward that mark is.

Fine art is knowledge made visible.

Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see.

By painting colors and lines and forms seen in quickened mood I was seeking to make this mood vibrate as a phonograph does. This was the origin of the paintings in The Frieze of Life.

I don't think we have reached a point where art really translates into science. Perhaps for some people, having good visuals can help translate into science.

One advantage of photography is that it's visual and can transcend language.

A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.

I've always believed that photography is a way to shape human perception.