Paul Gauguin
If I did what has already been done, I would be a plagiarist and would consider myself unworthy; so I do something different and people call me a scoundrel. I'd rather be a scoundrel than a plagiarist!Collection: People
The missionary is no longer a man, a conscience. He is a corpse, in the hands of a confraternity, without family, without love, without any of the sentiments that are dear to us. Emasculated, in a sense, by his vow of chastity, he offers us the distressing spectacle of a man deformed and impotent or engaged in a stupid and useless struggle with the sacred needs of the flesh, a struggle which, seven times out of ten, leads him to sodomy, the gallows, or prison.Collection: Stupid
for Christ's sake, were the mountains blue, then chuck on some blue and don't go telling me that it was a blue a bit like this or like that, it was blue wasn't it? Good - make them blue and that's enough!Collection: Blue
On an instrument you start from one tone. In painting you start from several.Collection: Tone
Oh yes! He loved yellow, did good Vincent...When the two of us were together in Arles, both of us insane, and constantly at war over beautiful colors, I adored red; where could I find a perfect vermilion?Collection: Beautiful
Go on working, freely and furiously, you will make progress and sooner or later your worth will be recognised, if you have any.Collection: Progress
The work of a man is the explanation of the man.Collection: Work
The cyclone ends. The sun returns; the lofty coconut trees lift up their plumes again; man does likewise. The great anguish is over; joy has returned; the sea smiles like a child.Collection: Children
Literary poetry in a painter is something special, and is neither illustration nor the translation of writing by form.Collection: Writing
Beware of luxury! Beware of acquiring the taste and need for it, under the pretext of providing for the morrow.Collection: Luxury
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!Collection: Crazy
You may dream freely when you listen to music as well as when you look at painting. When you read a book you are the slave of the author's mind.Collection: Dream
However depressed I may be I am not in the habit of giving up a project without having tried everything, even the 'impossible', to gain my end.Collection: Determination
Out in the sun, some painters are lined up. The first is copying nature, the second is copying the first, the third is copying the second... You see the sequence.Collection: Copying
There is no such thing as exaggerated art. I even believe that there is salvation only in extreme.Collection: Art
I am entering into the truth, into nature.Collection: Truth
A nude by Degas is chaste. But his women wash in tubs!Collection: Degas
I made a promise to keep a watch over myself, to remain master of myself, so that I might become a sure observer.Collection: Promise
Beautiful colors exist, though we do not realize it, and are glimpsed behind the veil that modesty has drawn over them.Collection: Beautiful
A great sentiment can be rendered immediately. Dream on it and look for the simplest form in which you can express it.Collection: Dream
I am a great artist and I know it, it is because I am that I have been able to endure so much suffering.Collection: Healing
A hint - don't paint too much direct from nature. Art is an abstraction! study nature then brood on it and treasure the creation which will result, which is the only way to ascend towards God - to create like our Divine Master.Collection: Art
Night is here. All is at rest. My eyes close in order to see without actually understanding the dream that flees before men infinite space; and I experience the languorous sensation produced by the mournful procession of my hopes.Collection: Dream
Perhaps I have no talent, but all vanity aside - I do not believe that anyone makes an artistic attempt, no matter how small, without having a little - or there are many fools.Collection: Believe
Do you know what will soon be the ultimate in truth?Collection: Photography
But I owe something to Vincent, and that is, in the consciousness of having been useful to him, the confirmation of my own original ideas about painting. And also, at difficult moments, the remembrance that one finds others unhappier than oneself.Collection: Ideas
Without delay I began work, without hesitation and all of a fever.Collection: Fever
I was aware that on my skill as a painter would depend the physical and moral possession of the model.Collection: Skills
The critics can say stupid things and we can enjoy them, if we have the legitimate feeling of superiority - the satisfaction of a duty accomplished.Collection: Stupid
If instead of a figure you put the shadow only of a person, you have found an original starting point, that strangeness of which you have calculated.Collection: Shadow
Slyly, banteringly, but also overbearingly, the critic - the one who does not swallow anything whole, who waits until posterity has consecrated it before... howling - is among those who howl their admiration the way they howl their insults: don't be afraid, don't tremble - the beast doesn't have any nails or teeth, or even brain: it is stuffed.Collection: Waiting
Lacking many of the essential implements, it irritated me to be reduced to impotence in the face of artistic projects to which I had passionately given myself.Collection: Essentials
Art is either a plagiarist or a revolutionist.Collection: Art