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Art. Another word ruined by the Left.

Here’s some wisdom from the on-again-off-again commie, Pablo Picasso....

On Sayings...

“If you take my sayings and explode them in the air, they remain only

sayings. But if you fit them together in their correct places, you will

have the whole story.” (Dor del la Souchere, 1960, p. 13)
On The Parthenon...

“The Parthenon is really only a farmyard over which someone put a roof;

colonades and sculptures were added because there were people in Athens

who happened to be working and wanted to express themselves. It is not

what the artist does that counts, but what he is. Cezanne would never

have interested me a bit if he had lived and thought like Jacques Emile

Blanche, even if the apple he painted had been ten times as beautiful.

What forces our interest is Cezanne’s anxiety - that’s Cezanne’s lesson;

the torments of Van Gogh - that is the actual drama of the man. The rest

is a sham.” (Cashiers de Art, Conversation Avec Picasso, 1949)
On The Dictatorship of the Painter(s)...

“There ought to be an absolute dictatorship...a dictatorship of

painters...a dictatorship of one painter...to suppress all those who have

betrayed us, to suppress the cheaters, to suppress the tricks, to

suppress the mannerisms, to suppress charms, to suppress history, to

suppress a heap of other things. But common sense always gets away with

it. Above all, let’s have a revolution against that! The true dictator

will always be conquered by the dictatorship of common sense...and maybe

not!” (Cashiers de Art, Conversation Avec Picasso, 1949)
On Guernica and Communism...

“I am a communist and my painting is a communist painting. But if I were

a shoemaker, Royalist or Communist or anything else, I would not

necessarily hammer my shoes in any special way to show my politics.”

(Interview with Jerome Seckler, 1945, Picasso Explains)
On Truth...

“What is truth? Truth cannot exist. ... Truth does not exist. ... Truth

is a lie.” (Parmelin, Picasso: The Artist, His Model, and Other Related

Works, 1965, p. 110)
On How Awful Art Is...

“Enough of Art. It’s Art that kills us. People no longer want to do

painting: they make art. People want Art. And they are given it. But

the less Art there is in painting the more painting there is.”

(Parmelin, Picasso Plain, 1964, p. 30)
On Truth and Lies...

“We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize

truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist

must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of

his lies.” (The Arts, Picasso Speaks, 1923)
On The Threat of Artists...

“[T]oday we haven’t the heart to expel the painters and poets from

society because we refuse to admit to ourselves that there is any danger

in keeping them in our midst.” (Cashiers de Art, Conversation Avec

Picasso, 1949)
On Academic Training...

“Academic training in beauty is a sham. We have been so deceived, but so

well deceived that we can scarcely get back even a shadow of the truth.”

(Cashiers de Art, Conversation Avec Picasso, 1949)
On Planning...

“I see, for others, that is to say, in order to put on canvas the sudden

apparitions which come to me. I don’t know in advance what I am going to

put on canvas any more than I decide beforehand what colors I am going to

use. While I am working I am not conscious of what I am putting on the

canvas. Each time I undertake to paint a picture I have a sensation of

leaping into space. I never know whether I shall fall on my feet. It is

only later that I begin to estimate more exactly the effect of my work.”

(Zervos, Pablo Picasso, 1932, p. xv)
On The Virtue of Vagueness...

“You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a

vague idea.” (Kahnweiler, Juan Gris: sa vie, son oeuvre, ses ecrits,

1946, p. 83)
On Planning...

“One never knows what one is going to do. One starts a painting and then

it becomes something quite else. It is remarkable how little the

‘willing’ of the artist intervenes.” (Kahnweiler, Gesprache mit Picasso,

1959, p. 85-98)
On Subjects...

“...even if the painting is green, well then! the ‘subject’ is the

green. There is always a subjet; it’s a joke to suppress the subject,

it’s impossible.” (Parmelin, Picasso: The Artist and His Model, and

other Recent Works, 1965, p. 43)
On Bad Habits...

“I paint the way someone bite his fingernails; for me, painting is a bad

habit because I don’t know nor can I do anything else.” (Gallego Morell,

de Renoir a Picasso, 1958, p. 3)
On Imitation...

“Imitators? All right! Disciples if your like. But disciples be

damned. It’s not interesting. It’s only the masters that matter. Those

who create. And they don’t even turn around when you piss on their

heels...” (Georges-Michel, de Renoir a Picasso, 1954, p. 94-95)
On Imitation...

“What does it mean for a painter to paint in the manner of So-and-So or

to actually imitate someone else? What’s wrong with that? On the

contrary, it’s a good idea. You should constantly try to paint like

someone else. But the thing is, you can’t! You would like to. You

try. But it turns out to be a botch...And at the very moment you make a

botch of it that you’re yourself.” (Parmelin, Picasso: The Artist and

His Model, and other Recent Works, 1965, p. 43)
On Beauty...

“’I have never in any museum seen a picture as beautiful as this one.’

[Picasso] said to me, pointing to a sheet of tin hanging on the door.

‘the man who painted this picture was not thinking of his glory.’”

(Sabartes, Picasso: portraits et souvenirs, 1946, p. 210-212)
On Bad Paintings...

“I like all painting. I always look at the paintings - good or bad - in

barbershops, furniture stores, provincial hotels...I’m like a drinker who

needs wine. As long as it is wine, it doesn’t matter which wine.”

(Guttuso, Journals, Quoted in Mario De Micheli, 1964)
On Objective Reality...

“The goal I proposed myself in making cubism? To paint and nothing

more. And to paint seeking a new expression, divested of useless

realism, with a method linked only to my thought - without enslaving

myself with objective reality. Neither the good nor the true; neither

the useful or the useless.” (Del Pomar, Con las Buscadores del Camino,

1932, p. 126)
On Beauty, Art, and Research...

“I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the

beautiful? One must speak of problems in painting! Paintings are but

research and experiment. I never do a painting as a work of art. All of

them are researches.” (Liberman, Picasso, Vogue, November 1, 1956)
On Blindness as a Virtue...

“[T]hey ought to put out the eyes of painters as they do goldfinches in

order that they can sing better.” (Teriade, En causant avec Picasso,

Intransigeant, June 15, 1932)
On Kiddie Art...

When visiting an exhibition of children’s drawings, Piscasso remarked:

“When I was their age I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a

lifetime to learn to draw like them.” (Penrose, Picasso: His Life and

Work, 1958, p. 275)
On Imposters...

“Museums are just a lot of lies, and the people who make art their

business are mostly imposters.” (Zervos, Conversation avec Picasso, 1935)
On Symbolism and Communism...

“If I paint a hammer and sickle people may think it is a representation

of Communism, but for me it is only a hammer and sickle. I just want to

reproduce the objects for what they are, not for what they mean.”

(Interview with Jerome Seckler, Picasso Explains, 1945)
On Re-Education Camps and Art...

“If everyone would paint, political re-education would be unnecessary.”

(Spender, Keeping a Great City Alive, Vogue, December 1946, p. 194, 224, 226)
On Art as a Weapon...

“No, painting is not made to decorate apartments, it’s an offensive and

defensive weapon against the enemy.” (Tery, Picasso, n’est pas officer

dans l’Armee francaise, Les Lettres Francaises, March 24, 1945)