Salvador Dali? Pablo Picasso? Gertrude Stein? Alice B. Toklas? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: A self-assured painter once suggested that one should never deliberately create a portrait to look precisely like its subject. Instead, the brilliance of the artwork would cause the subject to grow to look like the portrait over time. Would you please help …
Category Archives: Pablo Picasso
Everybody Says That She Does Not Look Like It, But That Does Not Make Any Difference. She Will
Pablo Picasso? Gertrude Stein? Alice B. Toklas? Salvador Dali? Glenn Ligon? Arianna Huffington? David Mamet? Clifford Gessler? Michael Schulman? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: Depictions of people in paintings, photographs, books, and movies can dramatically change cultural perceptions. Powerful images cause accuracy to be superseded, and stylized portrayals to become reified. Near the beginning of the …
You Have To Have a Dream So You Can Get Up in the Morning
Charlotte Chandler? Billy Wilder? Lyn Erhard? Stanley Kramer? Pablo Picasso? Dear Quote Investigator: Your alarm clock sounds, and you wake up groggily. You press the snooze button to get ten more minutes of sleep. The alarm buzzes again, and you press the button again. How can you prevent this unhappy cycle? Instead of returning to …
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I Am a Lie That Always Tells the Truth
Jean Cocteau? Pablo Picasso? Herbert V. Prochnow? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: The life mission of an artist is paradoxical. Masterpieces are not subservient to narrow facticity. Representing truths and insights requires the imaginative transformation of raw materials. Here are two versions of an energizing maxim for artists: I am a lie that always speaks the …
Art Is a Lie That Makes Us Realize Truth
Pablo Picasso? Jean Cocteau? Dorothy Allison? Henry A. Murray? Peter De Vries? Albert Camus? Julie Burchill? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: Art works such as novels, paintings, and sculptures embody a stylized and distorted representation of the world. Yet, deep truths can best be expressed by deviating from the straitjacket of verisimilitude. Here are four versions …
One Starts To Get Young at the Age of 60 and Then It’s Too Late
Pablo Picasso? Jean Cocteau? Derek Prouse? Dear Quote Investigator: The proficiency, creativity, and potency of an artist can grow for decades. Yet, painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso apparently said the following about his change in mentality as he became older. Here are two versions: One starts to get young at 60 and then it is …
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God Is Really Only Another Artist. He Invented the Giraffe, the Elephant, and the Cat. He Has No Real Style
Pablo Picasso? Françoise Gilot? Carlton Lake? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: The famous Spanish painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso contemplated the dissimilarity of the animals created by God, e.g., the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat. He concluded that God had no consistent style. Would you please help me to find a citation? Quote Investigator: The …
So What? I Paint Fakes, Too
Pablo Picasso? Leonard Lyons? Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler? Arthur Koestler? Marshall McLuhan? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: The most fascinating anecdote about authenticity that I have ever heard features Pablo Picasso repudiating a painting that he apparently created. Are you familiar with this tale? Would you please explore its provenance? Quote Investigator: The earliest occurrence of this anecdote …
“But You Did That in Thirty Seconds.” “No, It Has Taken Me Forty Years To Do That.”
Pablo Picasso? Mark H. McCormack? James McNeill Whistler? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: A rapidly created artwork may still be quite valuable. An anecdote illustrating this point features Pablo Picasso and a pestering art lover. Would you please explore whether this tale is authentic or apocryphal? Quote Investigator: The earliest instance of the Pablo Picasso vignette …
“The Labour of Two Days, Is That for Which You Ask Two Hundred Guineas!” “No; I Ask It for the Knowledge of a Lifetime.”
James McNeill Whistler? Pablo Picasso? John Ruskin? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: According to legend a famous painter once created a work of art in a very rapid and seemingly slipshod fashion. Yet the price assigned to the piece was exorbitant. The artist was asked why the price of the painting was so large when the …