Oskar Kokoschka Quotes & Sayings

The most fundamental in me is coming uppermost, and the transient, the sensational, is dispersing, because it can't adversely influence what is essential to me. — Oskar Kokoschka

The awareness of imagery is part of living ... a life which derives its power from within itself will focus on the perception ... of images. — Oskar Kokoschka

The life of the consciousness is boundless. It interpenetrates the world and is woven in all its imagery. Therefore, we must listen closely to our inner voice. — Oskar Kokoschka

How do I define a work of art? It is not an asset in the stock-exchange sense, but a man's timid attempt to repeat the miracle that the simplest peasant girl is capable of at any time, that of magically producing life out of nothing. — Oskar Kokoschka

True dreams and visions should be as visible to the artist as the phenomena of the objective world. — Oskar Kokoschka

I used to be too subjective, and I was always tempted to find my inner self in the exterior and dissipate my imagination on other people and on life. — Oskar Kokoschka

How do I define art? A work of art is not an object of monetary value; it is a timid attempt by man to recreate the miracle of which every young woman is capable: to produce life from nothing. Hence, only women and artists have respect for life, and the segment of the so-called "society" that denies women the right to vote and therefore to participate, and denies artists the right to exist, does not really care for life. It oppresses humanity,and it has, directly or indirectly, a vested interest in wars. — Oskar Kokoschka

Consciousness is the grave of things, the place where they cease to exist, beyond which they end. And when they have ended, it seems that they no longer have any essential existence except in the visions in me. — Oskar Kokoschka

All that's left now is purely poetic work, putting more life into individual places, as I've made so sure of the fundamental mood and dimension of expression that it won't leave me groping around in uncertainty any more. — Oskar Kokoschka

Consciousness is a sea ringed with visions. — Oskar Kokoschka

Open your eyes at last and see ... now I will open the book of the world for you,there are no words in it,just pictures — Oskar Kokoschka

I cannot say why I wanted to paint.The only answer is in the pictures themselves. — Oskar Kokoschka

I try to keep my sitters moving and talking, to make them forget they are being painted. This has nothing to do with extracting intimate secrets or confessions, but rather with establishing, in motion, an essential image of the kind that remains in memory or recurs in dreams. — Oskar Kokoschka

I consider myself responsible to the coming generations, which are left stranded in a blitzed world, unaware of the soul trembling in awe before the mystery of life. — Oskar Kokoschka

However ugly a face may be, we can discover some beauty in it if we first experience wonder before it and then begin to understand it, too. — Oskar Kokoschka