Kooning Art Quotes & Sayings

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

The blood of man should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country, for our kind. The rest is vanity; the rest is crime. — Edmund Burke

Who listens to you when you are at your lowest lows? No one. But it is the best time when you should listen to your calling. — Aporva Kala

Mum was determinate to crush my spirit and put a stop to my behavior once and for all and she beat me up so violently, so often, that I finally understood I must never question her or so much as look at her directly again. — Joe Peters

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

Birdy Edwards is here. I am Birdy Edwards! — Arthur Conan Doyle

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

If you can change style, why stick to one style? Style is a vanity because it gives you product identification. — Norman Mailer

Art should not have to be a certain way, — 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

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

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

America has given me everything Australia couldn't. I grew up on a dairy farm. Now I live in Isleworth, a gated community in Orlando with Tiger Woods down the street. — Stuart Appleby

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

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

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

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

Angels, demons, spirits, wizards, gods and witches have peppered folk religions since mankind first started telling stories. — Robin Marantz Henig

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