Auguste Renoir Quotes

It is better to imitate ancient than modern work.

I couldn't go into the haphazard drawing or the paintings, the splashing of paint. I wanted to go back to a completely dry drawing, a dry conception of art.

The oldest theory of art belongs to the Greeks, who regarded art as an imitation (mimesis) of reality. The strength of that theory is that it explains the way in which art takes its materials from real life.

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.

A great painter can paint something really complex, but they can crystallize it into something really simple.

My work has threads of ideas from all over the place. I try to crystallise them in something simple and direct that the viewer can then take where they want.

The 'Women' had to do with the female painted through all ages, all those idols, and maybe I was stuck to a certain extent; I couldn't go on. It did one thing for me: it eliminated composition, arrangement, relationships, light - all this silly talk about line, colour and form - because that was the thing I wanted to get hold of.

I would like my work to be recognized as being in the classical tradition (Coptic, Egyptian, Greek, Chinese), as representing the Ideal in the mind. Classical art cannot possibly be eclectic. One must see the ideal in one's own mind. It is like a memory - an awareness -of perfection.

In art, one does not aim for simplicity; one achieves it unintentionally as one gets closer to the real meaning of things.

O thou sculptor, painter, poet! Take this lesson to thy heart: That is best which lieth nearest; Shape from that thy work of art.

Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought.

Conventional nudes based on classical originals could bear no burden of thought or inner life without losing their formal completeness.

And if out of a million visitors there is even one to whom art means something, that is enough to justify museums.

Beijing is constructing a 100,000 m2 modern art museum, yet it will not feature any of my work.

They see poetry in what I have done. No. I apply my methods, and that is all there is to it.

The illustrator is essentially a reporter: his subjects come from the outside, lit by a flash. A subject comes to the classical artist from inside, and when he discovers confirmation of it in the outside world he feels that it has been there all the time.

I don't tend to work directly from life, except in trying to mimic or match the outlines of its insanity. In other words, when I live through something, I just try to say to myself, "OK, remember this - life is really this crazy or scary or beautiful or surprising - so try to 'get at' that in your stories.

Art Gropes. It stalks like a hunter lost in the woods, listening to itself and to everything around it, unsure of itself, waiting to pounce.

With the birth of the artist came the inevitable afterbirth... the critic

You take a painting, you have a white, virginal piece of canvas that is the world of purity, and then you put your imagery on it, and you try to bring it back to the original purity.

It became a question of taste. I have a certain taste in art history. And that - I had a huge library of art history books in my studio. And I would simply have the models go through those books with me, and we began a conversation about, like, what painting means, why we do it, why people care about it why or how it can mean or make sense today.

Most artists look for something fresh to paint; frankly I find that quite boring. For me it is much more exciting to find fresh meaning in something familiar.

It's just that none of us had the wit or talent to make them into songs. We made them into life, which much messier, and more time consuming, and leaves nothing for anybody to whistle.

Works of art imitate and provoke other works of art, the process is the source of art itself.

How rich art is, if one can only remember what one has seen, one is never empty of thoughts or truly lonely, never alone.