Robert Henri Quotes

I do like books on anatomy. I have to say I'm an amateur physician, I guess.

You can't be a doctor if you don't know the entire parts of the body.

Sane judgment abhors nothing so much as a picture perpetrated with no technical knowledge, although with plenty of care and diligence.

I profess both to learn and to teach anatomy, not from books but from dissections; not from positions of philosophers but from the fabric of nature.

As picture teaches the colouring, so sculpture the anatomy of form.

Ever since I've been young I've been fascinated by the human body. I've written songs about it, but you can become quite morbid if you think about it too much - paranoid and a hypochondriac.

I love painting. I went to college in fine arts, and I still do it all the time.

The human body has two ends on it: one to create with and one to sit on. Sometimes people get their ends reversed. When this happens they need a kick in the seat of the pants.

I like the body. I like to design everything to do with the body.

The body, in 'La Belle Noiseuse,' was the source of the artist's creativity.

I use zero photography. I have a photographic memory and a complete knowledge of anatomy and physiology, and an interest in grasping the moment of what is happening, not just the outside, but the inside out.

In the arts the way in which an idea is rendered, and the manner in which it is expressed, is much more important than the idea itself.

They looked great, you know the drawings of the guys playing looked great and bits of string around their necks. So it didn't seem to be that difficult a thing to do, or that inaccessible.

Facts can be turned into art if one is artful enough.

I believe the reason I love painting so much is that it forces one to be objective.

The things that I paint are things that I know very well.

I love the idea of making images of the parts of the body that we all have but that no one pays attention to, like the soft area underneath your nose.

I liked medicine. I liked helping people. I liked the biology of it and understanding how the body works.

They [say] everybody's creative. Well, everybody is. But any real creativity has to rest on a basis of an acquired technique and an acquired knowledge; you can't be creative in a void, or you just get a mess.

A man's head is not like a scallion, which will grow again if you cut it off; if you cut it off wrongly, then even if you want to correct your error, there is no way of doing it.

In examining disease, we gain wisdom about anatomy and physiology and biology. In examining the person with disease, we gain wisdom about life.

I want to make portraits and images. I don't know how. Out of despair, I just use paint anyway. Suddenly the things you make coagulate and take on just the shape you intend. Totally accurate marks, which are outside representational marks.

The camera need not be a cold mechanical device. Like the pen, it is as good as the man who uses it. It can be the extension of mind and heart.

The brush is a more powerful and rapid tool than the point or the stump... the main thing that the brush secures is the instant grasp of the grand construction of a figure.

The human body is something that I truly love, above all else.