Quotes & Sayings About Manet

This woman's work is exceptional. Too bad she's not a man. — Edouard Manet

Whistler,' Manet called. 'How's your mother? — Christopher Moore

There is only one true thing: instantly paint what you see. When you've got it, you've got it. When you haven't, you begin again. All the rest is humbug. — Edouard Manet

I would kiss you, had I the courage. — Edouard Manet

Black is not a color. — Edouard Manet

I like to undress women - not to dress them. You know, like Manet's 'Olympia' or Helmut Newton's photographs - naked women with shoes. This is what I am trying to do. — Christian Louboutin

There is no symmetry in nature. One eye is never exactly the same as the other. — Edouard Manet

The latest fashion ... is absolutely necessary for a painting. It's what matters most. — Edouard Manet

The country only has charms for those not obliged to stay there. — Edouard Manet

Einstein's space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh's sky . The glory of science is not in a truth more absolute than the truth of Bach or Tolstoy, but in the act of creation itself. The scientist's discoveries impose his own order on chaos, as the composer or painter imposes his; an order that always refers to limited aspects of reality, and is based on the observer's frame of reference, which differs from period to period as a Rembrant nude differs from a nude by Manet. — Arthur Koestler

I need to work to feel well. — Edouard Manet

It may well be that the pictures of Courbet, Manet, Monet and their like contain beauties which escape the notice of such old romantic heads as ours, already streaked with silver threads. — Theophile Gautier

A standard line, promoted by people like Clement Greenberg, is that politics contaminates art, and Manet is often cited as an example of art for art's sake. — Hans Haacke

Insults are pouring down on me as thick as hail. — Edouard Manet

Manet did not do the expected. He was a pioneer. He followed his individual whim. Told the public what he wanted it to know, not the time worn things the public already knew and thought it wanted to hear again. The public was very much offended. — Robert Henri

One must be of one's time and paint what one sees. — Edouard Manet

In a face, look for the main light and the main shadow; the rest will come naturally - it's often not important. And then you must cultivate your memory, because Nature will only provide you with references. Nature is like a warden in a lunatic asylum. It stops you from becoming banal. — Edouard Manet

Littera scripta manet - 'The written word will remain'. That's true, but it won't be that much comfort to me. — Christopher Hitchens

The principal person in a picture is light. — Edouard Manet

I don't think any particular painters have inspired me, except in a general sense. It was more a matter of corroboration. The visual arts, from Manet onwards, seemed far more open to change and experiment than the novel, though that's only partly the fault of the writers. There's something about the novel that resists innovation. — J.G. Ballard

It is not enough to know your craft - you have to have feeling. Science is all very well, but for us imagination is worth far more. — Edouard Manet

Perhaps I'll call it Luncheon on the Grass, then," said Manet. "Since I've clearly forgotten to paint the model wet enough. — Christopher Moore

Manet also had an argument with Degas, the end result being that they each returned paintings that they had previous given to each other. — Doris Lanier

There are no lines in nature, only areas of colour, one against another. — Edouard Manet

Every new painting is like throwing myself into the water without knowing how to swim. — Edouard Manet

The things I felt ... about certain painters of the past that ... inspired me, like Cezanne and Manet ... that complete losing of oneself in the work to such an extent that the work itself ... felt as if a living organism was posited there on the canvas, on this surface ... That's truly ... the act of creation. — Philip Guston

Her nakedness was not absolute, for like Manet's _Olympia, behind her ear she had a poisonous flower with orange petals, and she also wore a gold bangle on her right wrist and a necklace of tiny pearls. I imagined I would never see anything more exciting for as long as I lived, and today I can confirm that I was right. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Die young, stay pretty. Blondie, right? We think of it as a modern phenomenon, the whole youth thing, but really, consider all those great portraits, some of them centuries old. Those goddesses of Botticelli and Rubens, Goya's Maja, Madame X. Consider Manet's Olympia, which shocked at the time, he having painted his mistress with the same voluptuous adulation generally reserved for the aristocratic good girls who posed for depictions of goddesses. Hardly anyone knows anymore, and no one cares, that Olympia was Manet's whore; although there's every reason to imagine that, in life, she was foolish and vulgar and not entirely hygienic (Paris in the 1860s being what it was). She's immortal now, she's a great historic beauty, having been scrubbed clean by the attention of a great artist. And okay, we can't help but notice that Manet did not choose to paint her twenty years later, when time had started doing its work. The world has always worshipped nascence. Goddamn the world. — Michael Cunningham

You would hardly believe how difficult it is to place a figure alone on a canvas, and to concentrate all the interest on this single and universal figure and still keep it living and real. — Edouard Manet

I'm a very ordinary girl, Moses. I know that I am. And I always will be. I can't paint. I don't know who Vermeer is, or Manet for that matter. But if you think ordinary can be beautiful, that gives me hope. And maybe sometime you'll think about me when you need an escape from the hurt in your head. — Amy Harmon

Nor did these society people add to Elstir's work in their mind's eye that temporal perspective which enabled them to like, or at least to look without discomfort at, Chardin's painting. And yet the older among them might have reminded themselves that in the course of their lives they had gradually seen, as the years bore them away from it, the unbridgeable gulf between what they considered a masterpiece by Ingres and what they had supposed must forever remain a "horror" (Manet's Olympia, for example) shrink until the two canvases seemed like twins. But we never learn, because we lack the wisdom to work backwards from the particular to the general, and imagine ourselves always to be faced with an experience which has no precedents in the past. — Marcel Proust

I paint as I feel like painting; to hell with all their studies. — Edouard Manet

I paint what I see and not what others like to see. — Edouard Manet

No one can be a painter unless he cares for painting above all else. — Edouard Manet

Manet wanted one day to paint my wife and children. Renoir was there. He took a canvas and began painting them, too. After a while, Manet took me aside and whispered, 'You're on very good terms with Renoir and take an interest in his future - do advise him to give up painting! You can see for yourself that it's not his metier at all. — Claude Monet

Color is a matter of taste and sensitivity. — Edouard Manet

Before my sister, Sara, and I went to bed at night, my mom would show us books on Manet and other artists. Even then I was always really interested in how the women looked in the images. — Erdem Moralioglu

The most authentic Russian Impressionism leaves one perplexed if one compares it with Monet and Pissarro. Here, in the Louvre, before the canvases of Manet, Millet and others, I understood why my alliance with Russia and Russian art did not take root. — Marc Chagall

Conciseness in art is essential and a refinement. The concise man makes one think; the verbose bores. Always work towards conciseness. — Edouard Manet

Steel is such a nice material to use. It can move. It's terribly easy, you just stick it or you cut it off, and bang! you're there: it's so direct. I think Manet was very direct, he didn't prepare his canvases like Courbet, he just put paint straight on and it's very like that with steel. — Anthony Caro

Ah, Manet has come very, very close to it and Courbet - the marrying of form and colour. — Vincent Van Gogh

Who is this Monet whose name sounds just like mine and who is taking advantage of my notoriety? — Edouard Manet

When the modern movement began, starting perhaps with the paintings of Manet and the poetry of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, what distinguished the modern movement was the enormous honesty that writers, painters and playwrights displayed about themselves. The bourgeois novel flinches from such notions. — J.G. Ballard

I put it (a still life of a pear, made by Manet, ed.) there (on the wall, next to Ingres' Jupiter, ed.), for a pear like that would overthrow any god. — Edgar Degas

Manet nonetheless seems to have been captivated by her appearance, or at least by the visual possibilities of dressing her in exotic costumes and placing her in beguiling poses. — Ross King

The reproach that superficial people formulate against Manet, that whereas once he painted ugliness, now he paints vulgarity, falls harmlessly to the ground, when we recognize the fact that he paints the truth. — Stephane Mallarme

Concision in art is a necessity and an elegance. The verbose painter bores: who will get rid of all these trimmings? — Edouard Manet

There are lessons for long-term relationships in the way that Manet approached asparagus. — Alain De Botton

One night is awaiting us all, and the way of death must be trodden once.
[Lat., Omnes una manet nox,
Et calcanda semel via leti.] — Horace

Above all, keep your colors fresh! — Edouard Manet

There is nothing new under the sun, not even Manet. — Jules Breton

If I'm lucky, when I paint, first my patrons leave the room, then my dealers, and if I'm really lucky I leave too. — Edouard Manet

Monet, Manet, Sisley, Renoir, Van Gogh and others went outside to paint for one simple reason - it looks different outside. — Mike Svob

Every time I paint, I throw myself into the water
in order to learn how to swim. — Edouard Manet

There's no symmetry in nature. One eye is never exactly the same as the other. There's always a difference. We all have a more or less crooked nose and an irregular mouth. — Edouard Manet

Color is a matter of taste and of sensitivity. — Edouard Manet

The attacks of which I have been the object have broken the spring of life in me ... People don't realize what it feels like to be constantly insulted. — Edouard Manet

Many of these omnibuses were driven, oddly enough, by male models who had retired from the business, which meant that Parisians of Manet's day were transported around the city by men who had once posed as valiant biblical heroes or the vindictive deities of classical mythology. — Ross King