De Kooning Quotes & Sayings

The 'Women' had to do with the female painted through all ages, all those idols, and maybe I was stuck to a certain extent; I couldn't go on. It did one thing for me: it eliminated composition, arrangement, relationships, light - all this silly talk about line, colour and form - because that was the thing I wanted to get hold of. — Willem De Kooning

Abstract Expressionism - the first American movement to have a worldwide influence - was remarkably short-lived: It heated up after World War II and was all but done for by 1960 (although visit any art school today and you'll find a would-be Willem de Kooning). — Jerry Saltz

I'm not an Expressionist. I love to look at de Kooning, but I've got this kind of secret life, and that is something that pleases me. I have to try and make something out of it. — Ellsworth Kelly

I knew de Kooning and I went to his studio so I knew about de Kooning's work. But only a little handful knew about it, you know. Maybe there were ten people that knew about it. — Lee Krasner

The point they (Lissitzky, Rodchenko, Tatlin, Gabo , the neo-Plasticists, and so on) all had in common was to be inside and outside at the same time ... For me, to be inside and outside is to be in an unheated studio with broken windows in the winter, or taking a nap on somebody's porch in the summer. — Willem De Kooning

Not even for a million dollars would I paint a tree. — Willem De Kooning

I made my first trip west of the Hudson and it was a revelation. The naked musculature of the Rockies was overpowering and my painting responded. — Elaine De Kooning

Man's own form in space - his body - was a private prison; and that it was because of this imprisoning misery - because he was hungry and overworked and went to a horrid place called home late at night in the rain, and his bones ached and his head was heavy. — Willem De Kooning

What you do when you paint, you take a brush full of paint, get paint on the picture, and you have faith. — Willem De Kooning

It's really absurd to make ... a human image, with paint, today, when you think about it ... But then all of a sudden, it was even more absurd not to do it. — Willem De Kooning

I make pictures and someone comes in and calls it art. — Willem De Kooning

When, about fifteen years ago, I walked into Arshile's studio for the first time, the atmosphere was so beautiful that I got a little dizzy and when I came to, I was bright enough to take the hint immediately. If the bookkeepers think it necessary to make sure of where things and people came from, well then, I came from 36 Union Square ... I am glad that it is about impossible to get away from his powerful influence. — Willem De Kooning

The problem with property is that it takes so much of your time. — Willem De Kooning

I'd like to get all the colors in the world into one painting — Willem De Kooning

The big shock of my life was Abstract Expressionism - Pollock, de Kooning, those guys. It changed my work. I was an academically trained student, and suddenly you could pour paint, smear it on, broom it on! — LeRoy Neiman

Every so often, a painter has to destroy painting. Cezanne did it, Picasso did it with Cubism. Then Pollock did it. He busted our idea of a picture all to hell. Then there could be new paintings again. — Willem De Kooning

If you pick up some paint with your brush and make somebody's nose with it, this is rather ridiculous when you think of it, theoretically or philosophically. It's really absurd to make an image, like a human image, with paint, today. — Willem De Kooning

And then there is that one-man movement, Marcel Duchamp for me a truly modern movement because it implies that each artist can do what he thinks he ought to a movement for each person and open for everybody. — Willem De Kooning

Every artist returns to things. The drawings that you make as a child or as an adolescent and the ideas that you have as a young beginning artist, no doubt they crop up again and again. — Elaine De Kooning

Willem de Kooning as an artist is insane, Sonia Rykiel is amazing for her colour sensibility, and Ettore Sottsass was an architect and product designer who sometimes created clothes to go with his other designs. — Kelly Wearstler

Art has been hijacked by nonartists. It's been taken over by bookkeeping. The whole thing is so corrupt. But I suppose that's okay. For artists, everything is grist for the mill. Artists are like cockroaches; we can't be stamped out. — Elaine De Kooning

How does an artist know when the line that he just painted is good or not good? That's the catch. De Kooning was the greatest of my contemporaries in art, and he knew when he'd done a good line. When he didn't, he threw it away. I wish I'd thrown away some of mine. — Philip Johnson

Content is a glimpse of something, an encounter like a flash. It's very tiny - very tiny. Content. — Willem De Kooning

For one thing, I want gesture-any kind of gesture, all kinds of gesture-gentle or brutal, joyous or tragic; the gesture of space soaring, sinking, streaming, whirling; the gestures of light flowing or spurting through color. I see everything as possessing or possessed by gesture. I've often thought of my paintings as having an axis around which everything revolves. — Elaine De Kooning

I might work on a painting for a month, but it has too look like I painted it in a minute. — Willem De Kooning

A painting to me is primarily a verb, not a noun, an event first and only secondarily an image. — Elaine De Kooning

I think I'm painting a picture of two women but it may turn out to be a landscape. — Willem De Kooning

Content is a glimpse. — Willem De Kooning

Even an abstract form has to have a likeness. — Willem De Kooning

I paint the way I do because I can keep on putting more and more things in - like drama, pain, anger, love, a figure, a horse, my ideas of space. It doesn't matter if it differs from mine, as long as it comes from the painting, which has its own integrity and intensity. — Willem De Kooning

Willem de Kooning is generally credited for coming out of the painterly gates strong in the forties, revolutionizing art and abstraction and reaching incredible heights by the early fifties, and then tailing off. — Jerry Saltz

Women can also be creative in total isolation. I know excellent women artists who do original work without any response to speak of. Maybe they are used to lack of feedback. Maybe they are tougher. — Elaine De Kooning

Watercolors is the first and the last thing an artist does. — Willem De Kooning

I remember being handed a score composed by Mozart at the age of eleven. What could I say? I felt like de Kooning, who was asked to comment on a certain abstract painting, and answered in the negative. He was then told it was the work of a celebrated monkey. 'That's different. For a monkey, it's terrific'. — Igor Stravinsky

If you're an artist, the problem is to make a picture work whether you are happy or not. — Willem De Kooning

The texture of experience is prior to everything else. — Willem De Kooning

The word 'abstract' comes from the light tower of the philosophers ... one of their spotlights that they have particularly focussed on 'Art' ... (abstraction was) not so much what you could paint but rather what you could not paint. You could not paint a house or a tree or a mountain. It was then that subject matter came into existence as something you ought not have. — Willem De Kooning

I'm not interested in 'abstracting' or taking things out or reducing painting to design, form, line, and color. I paint this way because I can keep putting more things in it - drama, anger, pain, love, a figure, a horse, my ideas about space. Through your eyes it again becomes an emotion or idea. — Willem De Kooning

Art should not have to be a certain way, — Willem De Kooning

My interest in desperation lies only in that sometimes I find myself having become desperate. Very seldom do I start out that way. I can see of course that, in the abstract, thinking and all activity is rather desperate. — Willem De Kooning

I don't paint to live, I live to paint. — Willem De Kooning

In art, one idea is as good as another. If one takes the idea of trembling, for instance, all of a sudden most art starts to tremble. Michelangelo starts to tremble. El Greco starts to tremble. All the Impressionists start to tremble. — Willem De Kooning

The drawings that interest me most are made with closed eyes. With eyes closed, I feel my hand slide down on the paper. I have an image in mind, but the results always surprise me. — Willem De Kooning

Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure. — Willem De Kooning

Maybe in that earlier phase I was painting the woman in me. Art isn't a wholly masculine occupation, you know. — Willem De Kooning

Im not someone whos ever said anything definitive about his work. In my life also I have very little fixed form. I can change overnight. — Willem De Kooning

The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time. — Willem De Kooning

I feel sometimes an American artist must feel, like a baseball player or something - a member of a team writing American history.. — Willem De Kooning

If I stretch my arms and wonder where my fingers are - that is all the space I need as a painter. — Willem De Kooning

You have to keep on the very edge of something, all the time, or the picture dies. — Willem De Kooning

Whatever an artist's personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical. He acts from or upon other artists. — Willem De Kooning

Artists are like cockroaches; everything is grist for the mill. — Elaine De Kooning

Once, after finishing a picture, I thought I would stop for awhile, take a trip, do things-the next time I thought of this, I found five years had gone by. — Willem De Kooning

Style is a fraud. I always felt the Greeks were hiding behind their columns. — Willem De Kooning

I see the canvas and I begin ... It's a necessary evil to get into the work, and it's pretty marvelous to be able to get out of it. — Willem De Kooning

Even abstract shapes must have a likeness — Willem De Kooning

I'm more interested in character. Character comes out of the work. Style is applied or imposed on it. — Elaine De Kooning

I have to change to stay the same. — Willem De Kooning

An artist is forced by others to paint out of his own free will. — Willem De Kooning

An artist is someone who makes art ... He didn't invent it ... — Willem De Kooning

The past does not influence me; I influence it. — Willem De Kooning

I read somewhere that Rubens said students should not draw from life, but draw from all the great classic casts. Then you really get the measure of them, you really know what to do. And then, put in your own dimples. Isn't that marvelous! — Willem De Kooning

Flesh was the reason why oil painting was invented — Willem De Kooning

I wanted my work to be seen for free in a public space, I want to be up there with Pollock and de Kooning, one of the big boys. — Stella Vine

In art one idea is as good as another. — Willem De Kooning

Yes, I am influenced by everbody. But every time I put my hands in my pockets I find someone else's fingers there. — Willem De Kooning

I am not a follower of Monet. I am not an admirer or follower of De Kooning. I am not an action painter. I am not an abstract expressionist. I am not younger or older. I will not take my hat off to any other artist living or dead in all the world. I know this. — Milton Resnick

The artist fills space with an attitude. The attitude never comes from himself alone. — Willem De Kooning

The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves — Willem De Kooning

The idea of space is given to the artist to change if he can. The subject matter in the abstract is space. — Willem De Kooning

Inspiration is indispensable to my work, but it is hard to come by. It is there or it is not; it is a gift of the gods. — Elaine De Kooning

Who, in 2007, would have thought that a drawing by Willem De Kooning would be a safer asset than shares in Lehman Brothers? By autumn 2008, this would clearly be the case. — Sarah Thornton