Paul Gauguin Quotes

I borrow some subject or other from life or from nature, and, using it as a pretext, I arrange lines and colors so as to obtain symphonies, harmonies that do not represent a thing that is real, in the vulgar sense of the word, and do not directly express any idea, but are supposed to make you think the way music is supposed to make you think, unaided by ideas or images, simply through the mysterious affinities that exist between our brains and such arrangements of colors and lines.

Don't over finish your work. There is value to done.

I want only silence, silence and again silence. Let me die quite and forgotten, or if I must live, let me live more quite, and forgotten still...

I am leaving in order to have peace and quiet, to be rid of the influence of civilization. I want only to do simple, very simple art, and to be able to do that, I have to immerse myself in virgin nature, see no one but savages, live their life, with no other thought in mind but to render, the way a child would, the concepts formed in my brain and to do this with the aid of nothing but the primitive means of art, the only means that are good and true.

Be stingy of nothing but the name of friend, and take care not to waste your insults.

Brave as you may be, wise even as you may be, you tremble when the earth trembles. That is a sensation common to everybody and which no one would ever deny.

No one is good; no one is evil; everyone is both, in the same way and in different ways. …
It is so small a thing, the life of a man, and yet there is time to do great things, fragments of the common task.

All the masters have those weak points that are called masterpieces; and besides, they do them as crowd pleasers — to prove that they have the know-how.

No one wants my painting because it is different from other people's — peculiar, crazy public that demands the greatest possible degree of originality on the painter's part and yet won't accept him unless his work resembles that of the others!

I am a child. I'm an independent. They can not mock me for two things they are not. They blame me, especially your family. They do not know what is in the artist's nature. Let me live like this for some time. I continue along my path. I have a goal. I will prove to you that I am right. I am a great artist, I know that. That's why I endure so much suffering to follow my calling. Otherwise I would feel like a villain. There will come a day when our children can face anyone... with their father's name to protect and honor.

How do you see this tree? Is it really green? Use green, then, the most beautiful green on your palette. And that shadow, rather blue? Don't be afraid to paint it as blue as possible.

With what is he concerned? Drawing was at its lowest ebb; it had to be restored. Looking at these nudes, I exclaim, 'Drawing has come back again!'
As a man and painter he sets an example. 'Degas' is one of those rare masters who could have had anything he wanted, yet he scorned decorations, honors, fortune, without bitterness, without jealousy.

Don't paint from nature too much. Art is an abstraction. Derive this abstraction from nature while dreaming before it, and think more of the creation that will result.

Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge — and has to content oneself with dreaming.

D’où venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous?