Pierre Bonnard Quotes

A photograph is usually looked at - seldom looked into.

Photographs don't 'reveal' much at all but instead help us generate a kind of visual vocabulary that we can use to make sense of the world and direct our attention to certain things around us. In other words, they help us learn how to see.

Seeing is in some respect an art, which must be learnt.

An object is frequently not seen, from not knowing how to see it, rather than from any defect of the organ of vision.

A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera.

Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one's sensations.

To look is one thing, to see is another thing; to see is very difficult, normally; to look is to try to see. I have looked and I hope I have seen.

I wanted to communicate what I had seen, so that others could see it.

A camera teaches you how to see without a camera.

My work isn't about form. It's about seeing.

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.

Observe Everything. Communicate Well. Draw, Draw, Draw.

Photography allows you to learn to look and see. You begin to see things you'd never paid attention to.

I've no doubt that those photographs i took will make people look at everything in a more interesting way - the little tear on one piece of paper, the shadow on another. But good painting has always done that - made you see things. And the most ordinary can be the most extraordinary.

The camera gave me an incredible freedom. It gave me the ability to parade through the world and look at people and things very, very closely.

Seeing is a neglected enterprise.

I am a visual man. I watch, watch, watch. I understand things through my eyes.

An experience teaches only the good observer; but far from seeking a lesson in it, everyone looks for an argument in experience, and everyone interprets the conclusion in his own way.

The question is not what you look at – but how you look & whether you see.

What counts isn't being able to do a thing, it's seeing what it is. Seeing is the decisive act, and ultimately it places the maker and the viewer on the same level.

Sight is a faculty; seeing is an art.

A painter may be looking at the world in a way which is very different from everyone else. If he's a craftsman, he can get other people to see the world through his eyes, and so he enlarges our vision, perception, and there's great value in that.

I observe the world and the people surrounding me.

If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye.

One must always draw, draw with the eyes, when one cannot draw with a pencil.