Michael Portillo Quotes

My first influence obviously was Picasso.

I think Picasso was, without doubt, the greatest portraitist of the 20th century, if not any other century.

'Le Reve' may be one of the three best pictures Pablo Picasso ever painted.

Picasso is a character that has pursued me for a long time and I always rejected. He deserves a lot of respect because I am from Malaga, and I was born four blocks from where he was born.

Warhol was definitely an inspiration when I was younger. I wouldn't quantify his sort of influence. I've been influenced by nature and science, and I've been influenced by people like Ernst and Rauschenberg, Cornell and Bosch and Bruegel, by writers like Haruki Murakami to Pablo Neruda to Artaud.

Picasso was hugely innovative, and, wow, did he have facility, amazing ability, but I don't think he painted a masterpiece.

If I could have any artist's work on my sitting room wall it would probably be by Van Gogh or Picasso.

I think 'Les Demoiselles D'Avignon' is one of the most transfixing paintings of all time. And it was made by a monster of a man.

I don't know if you've noticed it. But Duchamp was magnificent.

I find the aesthetics of the 20th century hopelessly barren.

It is not possible to overstate the influence of Paul Cezanne on twentieth-century art. He's the modern Giotto, someone who shattered one kind of picture-making and invented a new one that the world followed.

I really appreciate artists of the 20th century, and I can see a lot of their influence on my work, but to suggest that my design only fits within an 'ism' kind of bothers me.

Well, let's say we acknowledged the School of French Painting - the Paris School of painting as the leading force and vitality of the time. I think that was understood and felt and experienced.

Whether it be in comics, games or film, you can trace the art direction and influences back to some earlier, real-life historic period or artistic movement.

I don't think there is any question that Picasso is the greatest figure of the 20th century.

Well, I think there are artists who are more or less contemporary with Hopper who are more relevant.

I went to the Academy and studied with Stuck who was then a big man. But didn't interest me. I didn't know that before me there was Kandinsky and Klee who had also studied with Stuck. He had a good name at that time.

I still remember my first Giacometti exhibition, and going back to the museum every day, whenever I could, to look again and again at these long, thin stick figures, so beautiful, so graceful. That, I think, was the moment I became really obsessed by art.

I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism.

Picasso's always been such a huge influence that I thought when I started the cartoon paintings that I was getting away from Picasso, and even my cartoons of Picasso were done almost to rid myself of his influence.

The last hundred years have been retinal; even the cubists were. The surrealists tried to free themselves, and earlier so had the dadaists, but unfortunately, these latter were nihilists and didn't produce enough to prove their point, which, by the way, they didn't have to prove - according to their theory.

I thought it would be very nice to become Picasso or Rembrandt, or a van Gogh.

The paintings by Van Gough and Chagall had a big influence on me.

I wanted to paint in a folk-artist-y way. My heroes were Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, and Rembrandt. I think Picasso is about as a modern as I got. But I incorporated things that they rejected as well as movements that happened later.

I happen to like Precisionism. It talks to me because I collect Cubism.