Bonnard Quotes & Sayings

Friendship is the positive and unalterable choice of a person whom we have singled out for qualitites that we admire. — Abel Bonnard

The expression on my face - who on earth would be interested in that? All that I have to say is to be found in my works. (On being photographed) — Pierre Bonnard

The important thing is to remember what most impressed you and to put it on canvas as fast as possible. — Pierre Bonnard

Speaking, when you have something to say, is like looking. But who looks? If people could see properly, and see whole, they would all be painters. And it's because people have no idea how to look that they hardly ever understand. — Pierre Bonnard

What I am after is the first impression - I want to show all one sees on first entering the room - what my eye takes in at first glance. — Pierre Bonnard

You cannot possibly invent painting all by yourself. — Pierre Bonnard

Painting has to get back to its original goal, examining the inner lives of human beings. — Pierre Bonnard

Many of Bonnard's later paintings are shot through with a powerful sense of morbidity. The self-portraits he painted after catching sight of himself in the various mirrors in the house - the mirror in the bathroom or the mirror in his bedroom, still lit from above by a single accusatory light bulb - are almost appallingly raw. — Andrew Graham-Dixon

Work on the accent, it will enliven the whole. — Pierre Bonnard

You reason color more than you reason drawing ... Color has a logic as severe as form. — Pierre Bonnard

Color does not add a pleasant quality to design - it reinforces it. — Pierre Bonnard

Wingate sighs thoughtfully. "Hard to say. He's not static. He began with almost pure Impressionism, which is dead. Anyone can do it. But the vision was there. Between the fifth and twelfth paintings, he began to evolve something much more fascinating. Are you familiar with the Nabis?"
The what?"
Nabis. It means 'prophets.' Bonnard, Denis, Vuillard?"
What I know about art wouldn't fill a postcard."
Don't blame yourself. That's the American educational system. They simply don't teach it. Not unless you beg for it. Not even in university. — Greg Iles

I'm trying to do what I have never done - give the impression one has on entering a room: one sees everything and at the same time nothing. — Pierre Bonnard

What attracted me was less art itself than the artist's life and all that it meant for me: the idea of creativity and freedom of expression and action. I had been attracted to painting and drawing for a long time, but it was not an irresistible passion; what I wanted, at all costs, was to escape the monotony of life. — Pierre Bonnard

Draw your pleasure, paint your pleasure, and express your pleasure strongly. — Pierre Bonnard

In love one had need of being believed, in friendship of being understood. — Abel Bonnard

Love It, is to increase by forgetting. It's escape through a single being to mediocrity of all other. It's one more for trying to be less. It's become like everyone else in the belief that we become as a person. It is giving appointment to happiness in the palace of chance. — Abel Bonnard

I can think of numberless males, from Bonnard to Callahan, who have photographed their lovers and spouses, but I am having trouble finding parallel examples among my sister photographers. The act of looking appraisingly at a man, making eye contact on the street, asking to photograph him, studying his body, has always been a brazen venture for a woman, though, for a man, these acts are commonplace, even expected. — Sally Mann

The artist who paints the emotions creates an enclosed world ... the picture ... which, like a book, has the same interest no matter where it happens to be. Such an artist, we may imagine, spends a great deal of time doing nothing but looking, both around him and inside him. — Pierre Bonnard

You reason colour more than you reason drawing Colour has a logic as severe as form. — Pierre Bonnard

After the great Impressionists, and again after Van Gogh and Gaugin, people said, 'Painting is now played out.' But Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Roussel and Vuillard appeared and gave them the lie. 'We were wrong,' said the croakers, 'but this at any rate is the end.' Yet to refute them, and to prove that there is no end to art, still another generation of painters sprang up. — Ambroise Vollard

It's not a matter of painting life, it's a matter of giving life to painting. — Pierre Bonnard

I should like to present myself to the young painters of the year 2000 with the wings of a butterfly. — Pierre Bonnard

It seemed to me that it was possible to translate light, forms, and character using nothing but color, without recourse to values. — Pierre Bonnard

The precision of naming takes away from the uniqueness of seeing. — Pierre Bonnard

Art will never be able to exist without nature. — Pierre Bonnard

Imagination is merely the exploitation of our memory. — Pierre Bonnard

Drawing is feeling. Color is an act of reason. — Pierre Bonnard

Art is not nature ... There was a lot more to be got out of color. — Pierre Bonnard

I am just beginning to understand what it is to paint. A painter should have two lives, one in which to learn, and one in which to practice his art. — Pierre Bonnard

When you forget everything, there only remains yourself - and that is not enough. — Pierre Bonnard

One always talks of surrendering to nature. There is also such a thing as surrendering to the picture. — Pierre Bonnard

It is still color, it is not yet light. — Pierre Bonnard

It was an unforgettable painting; it set a dense golden halo of light round the most trivial of moments, so that the moment, and all such moments, could never be completely trivial again. — John Fowles

One does not always sing out of happiness. — Pierre Bonnard

The painter's only solid ground is the palette and colors, but as soon as the colors achieve an illusion, they are no longer judged. — Pierre Bonnard

How many days have I spent alone with my cat ... and when I say alone, I mean without a material being, for my cat is a mystical companion, a spirit. — Pierre Bonnard

Anyway, for whatever interest is to be derived therefrom. Bacon, Balthus, and Magritte are my three favourite painters, along with Dubuffet, of the whole post-impressionist period, by which I mean that before them Bonnard, Vuillard, & Seurat are my favourite painters of that time. — Edward Gorey

I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan's new play or Le Balcon or Les Negres
of Genet, but I don't, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness — Frank O'Hara

The principal subject is the surface, which has its color, its laws over and above those of object. — Pierre Bonnard

And after drawing comes composition. A well-composed painting is half done — Pierre Bonnard

A painting that is well composed is half finished. — Pierre Bonnard