Max Liebermann Quotes

To me, art begets art. Painting feeds the eye just as poetry feeds the ear, which is to say that both feed the soul.

You're going to react to a painting in a way that the painting demands you react.

No, I didn't become disenchanted. I just couldn't paint like them.

Without artists, the order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish.

This was my first encounter with art as art (he saw 'Pinky' painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence and 'The Blue Boy" painted by Thomas Gainborough).. ..somebody actually MADE those paintings.. ..(it) was the first time I realized you could be an artist.

Unlike the older, more humanly shaped arts, which begin with a seed and accumulate their form organically, photography clips its substance out of an actual continuum.

The art is just really mysterious. If I understood it more, maybe I would write more.

It's art that's taught me to think and to write.

To be honest, I think, for me, the power is always with art. The art world clearly couldn't happen without art.

The paintings may communicate even better because people are lazy and they can look at a painting with less effort than they can read a poem.

Painting is a nail to which I fasten my ideas.

I would love to have been a painter in the tradition of the surrealist painters who I admire so much.

Art is not for the cultivated taste. It is to cultivate taste.

Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass.

I feel like there's too many paintings left unpainted that I just don't want to take the time away.

Look at any inspired painting. It's like a gong sounding; it puts you in a state of reverberation.

All sensitive people agree that there is a peculiar emotion provoked by works of art.

If I'm away from painting for a week, I get bored.

I look at a lot of artists. I'm inspired by - I suppose I shouldn't say 'inspired,' but it's not really influenced. I am inspired. Art comes from art.

Of course, in the art class, I was the model.

Painting is the only universal language. All nature is creation's picture book. Painting alone can describe every thing which can be seen, and suggest every emotion which can be felt. Art reaches back into the babyhood of time, and is man's only lasting monument.

Whatever an artist's personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical. He acts from or upon other artists.

I view art as an inspirational tool.

I am a great lover of art, in many forms: paintings, objets, textiles. I don't have the talent for painting, but I have a very good sense of colour, a love of visual beauty.

As a consumer, I don't create art, but I think whatever the message is, art has to touch you.