text:
Henri Matisse

Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French artist. Particularly known for his striking use of colour, Matisse is one of the very few indisputable giants of modern art, alongside Pablo Picasso and Wassily Kandinsky.

Quotes

1900s

 * I see with horror that the 'Salon Automne' is looming, for I haven't got, and shan't have, all I meant to be able to show there, the big stillife ['Harmony in Red'] has taken up so much of my time; but since I am content with the outcome, I tell myself one can't hope to be fast as well as good.
 * Letter to Sergei Shchukin [the Russian buyer of his still-life The Dessert: Harmony in Red (The Red Room), that year], 6 August 1908; as quoted by Hilary Spurling, The Unknown Matisse: Man of the North, 1869 – 1908, Penguin UK, 28 September 2006, note 182

Notes of a Painter (1908)

 * Quotes, unless otherwise noted, are from 'Notes d'un Peintre' (Notes of a Painter) in La Grande Revue, Henri Matisse (Paris, 25 December 1908); as translated by Jack D. Flam in Matisse on Art (1978). Flam's translation was originally published in 1973.

 * Rules have no existence outside of individuals: otherwise a good professor would be as great a genius as Racine.
 * p. 2

 * Expression for me does not reside in passions glowing in a human face or manifested by violent movement. The entire arrangement of my picture is expressive; the place occupied by my figures, the empty space around them, the proportions, everything has its share. Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the diverse elements at the painter's command to express his feelings. In a picture every part will be visible and will play its appointed role, whether it be principal or secondary. Everything that is not useful in the picture is, it follows, harmful. A work of art must be harmonious in its entirety: any superfluous detail would replace some other essential detail in the mind of the spectator.
 * p. 36

 * Underlying this succession of moments which constitutes the superficial existence of beings and things, and which is continually modifying and transforming them, one can search for a truer, more essential character, which the artist will seize so that he may give to reality a more lasting interpretation.
 * p. 37

 * For me all is in the conception. I must therefore have a clear vision of the whole from the beginning.
 * p. 37

 * I simply try to put down colours which render my sensation.
 * p. 38

 * There is an impelling proportion of tones that may lead me to change the shape of a figure or to transform my composition. Until I have achieved this proportion in all the parts of a composition I strive towards it and keep on working. Then a moment comes when all the parts have found their definite relationships, and from then on it would be impossible for me to add a stroke to my picture without having to repaint it entirely.
 * p. 38

 * What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or disturbing subject matter, an art which could be for every mental worker, for the businessman as well as the man of letters, for example, a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.
 * p. 38

 * The simplest means are those which best enable an artist to express himself. His means of expression must derive almost all of necessity from his temperament.
 * p. 39

 * Suppose I want to paint a woman's body: first of all I imbue it with grace and charm, but I know that I must give something more. I will condense the meaning of this body by seeking its essential lines. The charm will be less apparent at first glance, but it must eventually emerge from the new image which will have a broader meaning, one more fully human.
 * p. 48

Notes d'un Peintre (Notes of a Painter) (1908)

 * Quotes from: 'Notes d'un Peintre' (Notes of a Painter), Henri Matisse, in 'La Grande Revue', Paris, 25 December 1908; as quoted in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London

 * What I am after, above all, is expression. Sometimes it has been conceded that I have a certain technical ability but that, my ambition being limited, I am unable to proceed beyond a purely visual satisfaction such as can be procured from the mere sight of a picture. But the purpose of a painter must not be conceived as separate from his pictorial means, and these pictorial means must be the more complete (I do not mean complicated) the deeper is his thought. I am unable to distinguish between the feeling I have for life and my way of expressing it.
 * pp. 409-410

 * Expression, to my way of thinking, does not consist of the passion mirrored upon a human face or betrayed by a violent gesture. The whole arrangement of my picture is expressive. The place occupied by figures or objects, the empty spaces around them, the proportions – everything plays a part. Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the various elements at the painter’s disposal for the expression of his feelings
 * p. 410

 * In a picture every part will be visible and will play the role conferred upon it, be it principal or secondary. All that is not useful in the picture is detrimental.
 * p. 410

 * Composition, the aim of which is expression, alters itself according to the surface to be covered. If I take a sheet of paper of given dimensions I will jot down a drawing which will have a necessary relation to its format – I would not repeat this drawing on another sheet of different dimensions, for instance on a rectangular sheet.. ..a drawing must have a power of expansion which can bring to life the space which surrounds it.
 * p. 410

 * I want to reach the state of condensation of sensations which constitutes a picture. Perhaps I might be satisfied momentarily with a work finished at one sitting, but I would soon get bored looking at it; therefore, I prefer to continue working on it so that later I may recognize it as a work of my mind..
 * p. 410

 * I try to condense the meaning of this body [of a woman] by drawing its essential lines. The charm will then become less apparent at first glance, but in the long run it will begin emanate from the new image. This image at the same time will be enriched by a wider meaning, a more comprehensively human one, while the charm, being less apparent, will not be its only characteristic. It will be merely one element in the general conception of the figure.
 * p. 411

 * If upon a white canvas I jot down some sensations of blue, of green, of red – every new brush stroke diminishes the importance of the preceding ones. Suppose I set out to paint an interior.. .If I paint a green near the red, if I paint in a yellow floor, there must still be between this green, this yellow, and the white of the canvas a relation that will be satisfactory to me. But these several tones mutually weaken one another. It is necessary, therefore, that the various elements that I use be so balanced that they do not destroy one another..
 * p. 411

 * I am forced to transpose until finally my picture may seem completely changed when, after successive modifications, the red has succeeded the green as the dominant color. I cannot copy nature in a servile way, I must interpret nature and submit it to the spirit of the picture – when I have found the relationship of all the tones the result must be a living harmony of tones, a harmony not unlike that of a musical composition
 * p. 411

 * The chief aim of color should be to serve expression as well as possible. I put down my colors without a preconceived plan. If at the first step and perhaps without my being conscious of it one tone has particularly pleased me, more often then not when the picture is finished, I will notice that I have respected this tone while I have progressively altered and transformed the others. I discover the quality of colors in a purely instinctive way.
 * p. 412

 * To paint an autumn landscape I will not try to remember what colors suit this season, I will only be inspired by the sensation that the season gives me; the icy clearness of the sour blue sky will express the season just as well as the tonalities of the leaves. My sensation itself may vary, the autumn may be soft and warm like a protracted summer or quite cool with a cold sky and lemon yellow trees that give a chilly impression and announce winter.
 * p. 412

 * My choice of colors does not rest on any scientific theory; it is based on observation, on feeling, on the very nature of each experience. I.. ..merely try to find a color that will fit my sensation. There is an impelling proportion of tones that can induce me to change the shape of a figure or to transform my composition. Until I have achieved this proportion in all the parts of the composition I strive towards it and keep on working. Then a moment comes when every part has found its definite relationship, and from then on it would be impossible for me to add a stroke to my picture without having to paint it all over again.
 * p. 412

 * What interests me most is neither still life nor landscape but the human figure. It is through it that I best succeed in expressing the nearly religious feeling that I have towards life. I do not insist upon the details of the face. I do not care to repeat them with anatomical exactness. Though I happen to have an Italian model whose appearance at first suggests nothing but a purely animal existence, yet I succeed in picking out among the lines of his face those which suggest that deep gravity which persists in every human being.
 * p. 413

 * A work of art must carry in itself its complete significance and impose it upon the beholder even before he can identify the subject-matter. When I see the Giotto frescoes at Padua I do not trouble to recognize which scene of the life of Christ I have before me, but I perceive instantly the sentiment which radiates from it and which is instinct in the composition in every line and color.
 * p. 413

1910s

 * "I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me." After a pause full of intense thought on my part, I asked: "But if one hasn't always emotion. What then?" "Do not paint," he quickly answered. "When I came in here to work this morning I had no emotion, so I took a horseback ride. When I returned I felt like painting, and had all the emotion I wanted.
 * Interview with Clara T. MacChesney (1912), in Matisse on Art (1995) edited by Jack D. Flam, p. 66

 * I know that Seurat is completely the opposite of a romantic, which I am, but with a good portion of the scientific, of the rationalist, which creates the struggle from which I sometimes emerge the victor, but exhausted.
 * In a letter to Camoin, Autumn 1914; as quoted in ''Matisse on Art, Jack Flam, University of California Press 1995 p. 275, note 5

 * Delacroix's composition is more entirely created, while that of Seurat employs matter organized scientifically, reproducing, presenting t our eyes objects constructed by scientific means rather than by signs, coming from our feeling. As result there is in his works a positivism, a slightly inert stability, coming from his composition, which is not the result of a creation of the mind, but of a juxtaposition of the objects. It is necessary to cross this barrier to re-feel light, colored and soft, and pure, the noblest pleasure
 * Letter to Camoin, Autumn 1914; as quoted in ''Matisse on Art, Jack Flam, University of California Press 1995 p. 275, note 5

 * The work of Renoir, after that of Cézanne whose great influence had been manifested among artists, save us from whatever drying effect there is in pure abstraction. The rules that one might deduce in considering the work of these two masters appear to be more difficult to discover in the work of Renoir, who hides his efforts better. Whereas the continuous tension of the mind of Cézanne, his lack of self-confidence, prevent him from giving himself to us entirely even though he shows the evidence of his corrections, from which are easily (too easily) deduced rules that have a mathematical precision. [critical quote on Cubism ].
 * In a short text of Matisse, 1918, written for the catalogue of 'Den Franske Utstilling', 1918, Copenhagen; as quoted in ''Matisse on Art, Jack Flam, University of California Press 1995 p. 272, note 2

 * A little while ago I took a nap under an olive tree, and the color harmonies I saw were so touching. It's like a paradise you have no right to analyze, but you are a painter, for God's sake! Nice is so beautiful! Alight so soft and tender, despite its brilliance.
 * In a letter to a friend, Nice 1918, as quoted in 'Matisse & Picasso', Paul Trachtman, Smithsonian Magazine, February 2003, p. 6

1920s

 * Slowly I discovered the secret of my art. It consists of a meditation on nature, on the expression of a dream which is always inspired by reality. With more involvement and regularity, I learned to push each study in a certain direction. Little by little the notion that painting is a means of expression asserted itself, and that one can express the same thing in several ways. Exactitude is not truth, Delacroix liked to say.
 * "Interview with Henri Matisse" by Jacques Guenne, L'Art Vivant (15 September 1925), translated by Jack Flam in Matisse on Art (1995)

 * I will repeat what I once said to Guillaume Apollinaire: "For my part I have never avoided the influence of others. I would have considered it cowardice and a lack of sincerity toward myself."
 * original version in French: Je vous répéterai ce que je disais naguère à Guillaume Apollinaire: "Je n'ai, pour ma part, jamais évité l'influence des autres, j'aurais considéré cela comme une lâcheté et un manque de sincérité vis-à-vis de moi-même."
 * 'Interview with Henri Matisse' by Jacques Guenne, in 'L'Art Vivant' (15 September 1925)

1930s

 * At each stage I reach a balance, a conclusion. At the next sitting, if I find that there is a weakness in the whole, I make my way back into the picture by means of the weakness — I re-enter through the breach — and I reconceive the whole. Thus everything becomes fluid again.
 * Statement by Matisse to Tériade; as quoted by Tériade in 'Constance de Fauvisme', in 'Minotaure' (15 October 1936), translated by Jack Flam in Matisse on Art (1995)

 * I don't paint things. I only paint the differences between things.
 * Je ne peins pas les choses. Je ne peins que les différences entre les choses.
 * "Henri Matisse: contre vents et marées : peinture et livres illustrés de 1939 à 1943"

1940s

 * Tomorrow, Sunday, at 4 o'clock, visit from Picasso. As I'm expecting to see him tomorrow, my mind is at work. I'm doing this propaganda show [at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, 1945] with him. I can imagine the room with my pictures on one side, and his on the other. It's as if I were going to cohabit with an epileptic.
 * Quote of Matisse in his notebook, c. April 1945; as cited in 'Matisse & Picasso', Paul Trachtman, Smithsonian Magazine, February 2003, p. 6

 * An artist must possess Nature. He must identify himself with her rhythms, by effort that will prepare the mastery which will later enable him to express himself in his own language.
 * In a letter to Mr. Clifford, February 14, 1948; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 238

 * The future painter must feel what is useful for his development – drawing or even sculpture everything that will let him become one with Nature, identify himself with her, by entering into the things – which is what I call Nature – that arouse his feelings. I believe study by means of drawing is most essential. If drawing is of the Spirit and color of the Senses, you must draw first, to cultivate the spirit and to be able to lead color into spiritual paths.
 * In a letter to Mr. Clifford, February 14, 1948; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. 238-239

Jazz (1947)

 * Quotes of Matisse, from: Jazz, (1947); (Matisse's following notes accompany his prints, based on paper cutouts); transl. Sophie Hawkes, in the 1992 George Braziller edition - ISBN 0-8076-1291-X

 * Drawing with scissors: To cut to the quick in color reminds me of the direct cutting of sculptors.
 * Dessiner avec les ciseaux: découper à vif dans la couleur me rappelle la taille directe des sculpteurs.

 * The vertical is in my spirit. It helps me to define precisely the direction of lines, and in quick sketches I never indicate a curve, that of a branch in landscape for example, without being aware of its relationship to the vertical. My curves are not mad.
 * La verticale est dans mon esprit. Elle m'aide à préciser la direction des lignes, et dans mes dessins rapides je n'indique pas une courbe, par exemple, celle d'une branche dans un paysage, sans avoir conscience de son rapport avec la verticale. Mes courbes ne sont pas folles.

 * A musician once said: In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer understands what one is doing or what one knows, and when there remains an energy that is all the stronger for being constrained, controlled and compressed. It is therefore necessary to present oneself with the greatest humility: white, pure and candid with a mind as if empty, in a spiritual state analogous to that of a communicant approaching the Lord's Table. Obviously it is necessary to have all of one's experience behind one, but to preserve the freshness of one's instincts.
 * Un musicien a dit: en art la vérité, le réel commence quand on ne comprend plus rien à ce qu'on fait, à ce q'uon sait, et qu'il reste en vous une énergie d'autant plus forte qu'elle est contrariée, compressée, comprimée. Il faut alors se présenter avec la plus grande humilité, tout-blanc, tout pur, candide, le cerveau semblant-vide, dans un état d'esprit analogue à celui du communiant approchant la Sainte Table. Il faut évidemment avoir tout son acquis derrière soi et avoir su garder la fraîcheur de l'Instinct.

 * Do I believe in God? Yes, when I am working. When I am submissive and modest, I feel myself to be greatly helped by someone who causes me to do things that exceed my capabilities. However, I cannot acknowledge him because it is as if I were to find myself before a conjuror whose sleight of hand eludes me.
 * Si je crois en Dieu? Oui, quand je travaille. Quand je suis soumis et modeste, je me sens tellement aidé par quelqu'un qui me fait faire des choses qui me surpassent. Pourtant je ne me sens envers lui aucune reconnaissance car c'est comme si je me trouvais devant un prestidigitateur dont je ne puis percer les tours.

 * There are flowers everywhere for those who want to see them

1950s

 * You study, you learn, but you guard the original naiveté. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover.
 * In Time magazine (26 June 1950)

 * There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because before he can do so he has first to forget all the roses that were ever painted.
 * As quoted in obituaries (5 November 1954)

Posthumous quotes

 * We are born with the sensibility of a period of civilization. We are not masters of our production; it is imposed upon us.
 * As quoted in Abstract Painting, Michel Seuphor, Dell Publishing Co., 1964, p. 9

 * A picture must possess a real power to generate light.. ..for a long time now I've been conscious of expressing myself through light or rather in light.
 * As quoted in Matisse (1984) by Pierre Schneider

 * Impressionism is the newspaper of the soul.
 * As quoted in Matisse (1984) by Pierre Schneider

 * [I wouldn't mind turning into] a vermilion goldfish.
 * At age 80, as quoted in Matisse (1984) by Pierre Schneider

 * Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.
 * As quoted by in the review of 'The Drawings of Henri Matisse', exhibit at Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art, by Theodore F Wolff in The Christian Science Monitor (25 March 1985)

 * It is only after years of preparation that the young [artist] should touch color — not color used descriptively, that is, but as a means of personal expression.
 * As quoted by Theodore F. Wolff in The Christian Science Monitor (25 March 1985)

 * I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have the light joyousness of springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me..
 * As quoted by Theodore F. Wolff in The Christian Science Monitor (25 March 1985)

 * I have been no more than a medium, as it were.
 * As quoted in Smithsonian (November 1986)

 * The artist begins with a vision — a creative operation requiring effort. Creativity takes courage.
 * As quoted in Artist to Artist : Inspiration and Advice from Visual Artists Past & Present (1998), p. 62

Quotes about Matisse

 * My verse forms are relatively traditional (traditions alter). In general they have moved away from strict classical patterns in the direction of greater freedom — as is usual with most artists learning a trade. It takes courage, however, to leave all props behind, to cast oneself, like Matisse, upon pure space. I still await that confidence.
 * Fleur Adcock (New Zealand poet), as quoted by James Vinson, Contemporary Poets 3rd edition (1980)

 * We are not here in the presence of an extravagant or an extremist undertaking: Matisse's art is eminently reasonable.
 * Guillaume Apollinaire, article in La Falange (1907)

 * Matisse once said, "In order to paint a rose you have to forget every painting of a rose that's ever been painted in order to paint it anew."
 * Tony Barnstone in Conversations with Bharati Mukherjee Edited by Bradley C. Edwards (2009)

 * I have seen Matisse's that were more 'unfinished' and yet more 'finished' than any American painters. Matisse was obviously in a terrific emotion at the time and he was more ’unfinished’ than 'finished'.
 * William Baziotes (1950), as quoted in Artists' Session at Studio 35, 1950 (1990) p. 216.

 * For Matisse in particular it often served to separate areas of contrasting colour, assisting in the vibrant activation of such juxtaposed blocks. While the Impressionist use of colour contrasts had concentrated mainly on the complementary yellow and violet-blue pair, because these most aptly imitated the effects of sunlight and shadow in nature, Matisse shifted to the red-green complementaries. This pair creates the greatest optical vibration when juxtaposed because the two colours are closest in tone of any on the colour circle. As the eye tires of reading, say, the red as dominant, the green at once appears to come forward and dominate. This vacillation of the eye between the two colours vying for dominance sets up an optical vibration, which enhances the colour properties of each simultaneously. By focusing upon the red-green pair—which Matisse often biased towards pink-turquoise—he avoided the emphasis on the naturalistic representation associated with the Impressionists' use of colour. It was also a pair which, again because of tonal equivalence, affirmed the flatness of the picture surface by negating the illusion of depth.
 * Anthea Callen, Techniques of the Impressionists (1982) p. 155.

 * Unlike the essentially naturalistic colour opposition of yellow-blue/violet which characterized the Impressionist colour, Matisse began to exploit the more abstract, and... vibrant, oppositions of red-green. Because red and green colours are the closest in tone of all the complementary colour pairs, they set up a dazzling sensation which gives its own light and brilliance, without any direct imitation of natural effects of light. Thus the properties of colour itself, and the interactions of colour... were the basis of Matisse's mature art. Colour no longer stood for, or symbolized, anything external to painting itself; it was colour as colour.
 * Anthea Callen, Techniques of the Impressionists (1982) p. 178.

 * Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the Present with the Past. Neither in countries without a Present nor in those without a Past is it to be encountered. Proust in Venice, Matisse's birdcages overlooking the flower market at Nice, Gide on the seventeenth-century quais of Toulon, Lorca in Granada, Picasso by Saint-Germain-des-Prés: there lies civilization and for me it can exist only under those liberal regimes in which the Present is alive and therefore capable of assimilating the Past.
 * Cyril Connolly (British critic), The Unquiet Grave Pt. 2 (1944, revised 1951)

 * Picasso is taking Cézanne's elements — the cone, cylinder and sphere — into Cubism. Matisse is taking Cézanne's interest in the wholeness and the clarity of figures. They're taking almost opposite interpretations of what they see in Cézanne: Picasso is understanding it as decomposition, and Matisse is understanding it as composition.
 * John Elderfield (MoMA-curator and Matisse scholar) as quoted by Paul Trachtman, "Matisse & Picasso", Smithsonian Magazine (February 2003), p. 4.

 * Matisse... had first studied law and then spent [six] years as an art student... In the years following the 1900 World's Fair he struggled with poverty ...and with a good deal of public indifference toward his work. During that time, he worked his way through the different modes of vision employed in nineteenth-century avant-guard painting, starting with the impressionists and then moving on to Seurat, van Gogh, Gauguin, and especially Cézanne, who was to remain the greatest and longest-lasting source of inspiration to him. As early as 1899, Matisse made great sacrifices in order to buy a small but powerful Cézanne, Three Bathers, and he was the first of the younger avant-guard artists to absorb the radically new kind of pictorial thought that Cézanne's painting embodied. Cézanne was... Matisse said, "a sort of god of painting."
 * Jack Flam, Matisse and Picasso: The Story of Their Rivalry and Their Friendship (2003) pp. 4-5.

 * As Picasso began to occupy the territory of Cézanne, Matisse seemed to be moving closer to the legacy of van Gogh and Gauguin... pushed to find a new and different way of dealing with the fluidity and dynamism... in Cézanne... by turning even more intensely toward the decorative. During most of 1908... Matisse continued to work with flat forms and to explore the inherent ambiguities of the pictorial field—especially... the sensation of limitless space and to have... the background become... more important than the figures it contained. Since childhood he had loved textiles, and he had an acute understanding of the possible symbolic uses for decorative patterns—as in van Gogh's portraits of Madame Roulin as "La Berceuse," in which the floral pattern... becomes a metaphor for her vitality and fertility. Matisse's use of decorative patterning also provided... another way of holding emotion at arm's length while maintaining its intensity. It allowed... a pictorial space... sufficiently open and imaginative to incorporate a... range of contrasting visual rhythms... to evoke different... perceptual sensations. Such a fluid and open space enabled him to invest everyday subjects with... spirituality.
 * Jack Flam, Matisse and Picasso: The Story of Their Rivalry and Their Friendship (2003) pp. 61-62.

 * The more Matisse's body failed, the more he responded by inventing a mythic youthfulness that he could inhabit in his art. For Matisse, the first rule was to keep his art separated from the literal representation of the feelings behind it, to channel and redirect his emotions into imagery that transcended the raw stuff of life.
 * Jack Flam, Matisse and Picasso: The Story of Their Rivalry and Their Friendship (2003) p. 206.

 * I took a dislike to Matisse," the artist of the wealthy. The red paint of his canvases fizzes like soda water. He has not experienced the joy of ripening fruits. His mighty brush does not heal the vision, but offers it the strength of an ox, so that your eyes become bloodshot. I've had enough of his carpet chess and odalisques! Persian whimsies of a Parisian Maître!
 * Osip Mandelstam JOURNEY TO ARMENIA translated into English in The complete critical prose (1997)

 * Matisse's paintings were full of joy. He said he painted for tired businessmen, right? You know, like the goldfish bowl and the happy dancers on the green lawn with the cobalt blue sky, you know, the orange nudes? You know, for the most part, it's all very joyous. That's kind of what I was trying to say, you know. That's the kind of paintings that I like.
 * Joni Mitchell Interview (2014)

 * When Matisse died, he left me his Odalisques 'as a legacy', he proclaimed.
 * Pablo Picasso (1954, shortly after the death of Matisse) as cited by Paul Trachtman, "Matisse & Picasso", Smithsonian Magazine (February 2003), p. 7.

 * Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He recopies it five times, ten times, always clarifying the line. He's convinced that the last, the most stripped down, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and in fact, most of the time, it was the first. In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt.
 * Pablo Picasso (1964) as cited by Gyula Brassaï, Picasso and Company (trans. 1966)

 * You have got to be able to picture side by side everything Matisse and I were doing at that time. No one has ever looked at Matisse's painting more carefully than I; and no one has looked at mine more carefully than he.
 * Pablo Picasso (1960's) as cited by Paul Trachtman, "Matisse & Picasso", Smithsonian Magazine (February 2003), p. 1.

 * Matisse said, you have to read between the lines. When he would stop a line, say, at the ear, and beginning it again at the neck, he was really exercising the viewer's mind to fill in the blanks.
 * Robert Rauschenberg, Barbara Rose interview in Rauschenberg (1987) p. 72.

 * Though produced by a very old man, who was mortally ill, they seem to come from the springtime of the world.
 * John Russell on Matisse's paper cut-outs, The New York Times (25 November 1984)

 * Years later he [ Picasso ] would tell the French writer [w:André Malraux|André Malraux] of something else that shaped his Demoiselles [made in Paris, June-July 1907]. Matisse had shown him an African statue he'd bought. Then Picasso went to the dingy ethnographic museum in Paris, the 'Trocadero', with its collection of primitive artifacts. It smelled like a flea market, but it opened his eyes to the magic of masks and fetishes. 'If you give spirits a shape, you break free from them', he said, [and]: 'Suddenly.. .I grasped why I was a painter. All alone in that museum, surrounded by masks, Red Indian dolls, dummies covered with dust. The Demoiselles must have come that day..  ..because it was my first exorcising picture.'
 * Paul Trachtman, "Matisse & Picasso" (with quotes from the 1940's), Smithsonian Magazine, February 2003, p. 4.

title: Henri Matisse


text:
Man's Search for Meaning

Man's Search for Meaning (1946) is a book by Viktor Frankl which chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate.

Quotes

 * Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

 * The selection process was the signal for a free fight among all the prisoners, or group against group.

 * Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.

 * The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity — even under the most difficult circumstances — to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.

 * Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

 * Don't aim at success — the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run — in the long run, I say — success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.
 * p. 16-17 (60th anniversary edition)

 * A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.  I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way — an honorable way — in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."
 * p. 57 (60th anniversary edition); p. 37 (2006 paperback edition)

 * Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him.

 * What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.

 * A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how."

 * ...the story of the young woman whose death I witnessed in a concentration camp. It is a simple story. There is little to tell and it may sound as if I had invented it; but to me it seems like a poem. This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. "I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard," she told me. "In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously." Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, "This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness." Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. "I often talk to this tree," she said to me. I was startled and didn't quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. "Yes." What did it say to her? She answered, "It said to me, 'I am here — I am here — I am life, eternal life.'"
 * p. 69 (2006 paperback edition)

 * Having shown the beneficial impact of meaning orientation, I turn to the detrimental influence of that feeling of which so many patients complain today, namely the feeling of the total and ultimate meaninglessness of their lives. They lack the awareness of a meaning worth living for. They are haunted by the experience of their inner emptiness, a void within themselves; they are caught in that situation which I have called the "existential vacuum".
 * p. 128 (1985 mass market hardcover edition)

 * If architects want to strengthen a decrepit arch, they increase the load which is laid upon it, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together. So if therapists wish to foster their patients' mental health, they should not be afraid to create a sound amount of tension through a reorientation toward the meaning of one's life.

 * Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.

 * In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice. [...] But let me make it perfectly clear that in no way is suffering necessary to find meaning. I only insist that meaning is possible even in spite of suffering--provided, certainly, that the suffering is unavoidable. If it were avoidable, however, the meaningful thing to do would be to remove its cause, be it psychological, biological or political.

Postscript 1984 : The Case for a Tragic Optimism

 * based on a lecture at the Third World Congress of Logotherapy, Regensburg University (19 June 1983)

So, let us be alert — alert in a twofold sense: '''Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.'''
 * You may of course ask whether we really need to refer to "saints." Wouldn't it suffice just to refer to decent people? It is true that they form a minority. More than that, they always will remain a minority. And yet I see therein the very challenge to join the minority. For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.

Quotes about Man's Search for Meaning

 * During my radiation treatment I read ]]Man's Search for Meaning]]. People said, Isn't that book depressing? But it wasn't. It was honest...Here is the lesson I learned from Frankl about his time in a concentration camp, an explanation of how certain people were able to continue on despite extreme darkness: “We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life-daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the task which it constantly sets for each individual.” We are all responsible for our actions, and our reactions. We are responsible for how we respond to situations we cannot control. (p 43)
 * Alice Hoffman Survival Lessons (2013)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Man's Search for Meaning


text:
User talk:Jcrook1987

~ MosheZadka (Talk) 05:54, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:Jcrook1987


text:
Mr. Destiny

Mr. Destiny is a 1990 comedy film released by Touchstone Pictures. Would you give up everything you have... for everything you've ever wanted? Then meet...

Larry Joseph Burrows

 * Destiny's a pretty big concept, when you think about it. Where you are in life, how you got there, what would have happened if one thing or another had been different. To be honest, I never gave it much thought, myself, until today, June 14th, my 35th birthday, and without a doubt, the strangest day of my life. Do you remember the old story that starts, "This guy goes into a bar"? Well, I'm the guy, and here's the story.
 * Why is it every time you have a mouthful of freeze-dried coffee, your boss walks in on you?
 * Why is it every time your best friend's kissing you on the head, a beautiful woman comes along and catches you?
 * Why is it when you do something terrific, nine times out of 10 you're all alone, but when you screw up really big, the whole world is watching?
 * How well do you remember 1970?
 * Maybe it was because it was my birthday. Maybe it was seeing Cindy Jo. I don't know. But all morning I'd been thinking about what it would have been like if my life had turned out differently.
 * How about that! The desk is wired to my ass!

Mike the Bartender

 * You'll find a lot of people don't like you, Larry.
 * Congratulations, Larry. It's a brave man who takes control of his own destiny.

Other

 * Ellen Jane Burrows: Oh, honey, were you thinking about that silly baseball game again?
 * Jewel Jagger, Forklift Operator: You wouldn't want me to fork you to death, would you?
 * Jackie: When I played for the Bears, they used to call me "Cement Head". But you can call me Jackie.
 * Duncan the Tow Truck Driver: Somebody here call for a tow truck?

Dialogue

 * Clip Metzler, Larry's Best Friend: Well, you know what your problem is? Nothing's ever good enough for you. Way I see it, you've got the perfect life. You've got a wonderful home, a terrific wife, a good job, and the best friend money can buy. What else could a guy want?
 * Larry Joseph Burrows: A little excitement would be nice.

 * Larry Joseph Burrows: [voice-over] Why is it every time you break into your boss's office, he always walks in on you?
 * Niles Pender: Lose something, Burrows?
 * Larry Joseph Burrows: Something tells me I have.

 * Larry Joseph Burrows: 35 years old, and my life is shit.
 * Mike the Bartender: Can't be all that bad.
 * Larry Joseph Burrows: It's not that it's bad, you know, it's just that it's ordinary.

 * Larry Joseph Burrows: Sometimes I get the distinct feeling I'm missing out on something.
 * Harry Burrows: Well, what she's got - and she's got plenty you don't need.
 * Larry Joseph Burrows: You sure?
 * Harry Burrows: [pause] Not absolutely. But if I ever tried to find out, your mother would kill me.
 * Larry Joseph Burrows: You're the dad every kid dreams of, you know that?

 * Larry Joseph Burrows: So, Mike, do you do this a lot, I mean, you know, change peoples' lives and stuff?
 * Mike the Bartender: I've been known to make a few adjustments now and again.

 * Larry Joseph Burrows: How can my life change so much just because I hit one stinking baseball?
 * Mike the Bartender: Well, you see Larry, one's destiny is a very complicated thing. Every incident in a person's life affects everything else that follows it. Instead of missing the baseball, however, you hit it. Then you became a hero, married the prom queen, and so on, and so forth, until you find yourself exactly where you are. So you see, hitting that baseball has spun your life off in an entirely new direction.
 * Larry Joseph Burrows: Are you an angel or something?
 * Mike the Bartender: Not exactly, no.
 * Larry Joseph Burrows: Then what are you?
 * Mike the Bartender: Have you ever been faced with a decision, and you weren't sure what to do?
 * Larry Joseph Burrows: Yeah, sure, plenty of times.
 * Mike the Bartender: And then something inside you made you choose one direction over another?
 * Larry Joseph Burrows: Yeah. So?
 * Mike the Bartender: So that's me. I make the suggestions, and you make the choices. That's how destiny works, Larry - very subtly. Welcome to your new life, Larry. I hope you like it.

 * Larry Joseph Burrows: Is there anything else that's gonna come as a shock?
 * Mike the Bartender: It all will, to some degree.
 * Larry Joseph Burrows: To what degree?
 * Mike the Bartender: You'll see. Things have changed, Larry. You have to take the bad with the good. You didn't think everything was gonna be perfect, did you?
 * Larry Joseph Burrows: Well, I... I... I suppose not.
 * Mike the Bartender: This is your life, Larry. Learn to enjoy what you've got.

 * Mike the Bartender: Your destiny has been changed, Larry, by request, I might add. And you must take responsibility for the circumstances of your new life. They are, after all, of your own making.
 * Larry Joseph Burrows: Well, if I made 'em, I can unmake 'em!

 * Ellen Jane Burrows: Larry, if we had such a great life together, why'd you want it changed?
 * Larry Joseph Burrows: (pause) I guess... I just didn't know what I had.

 * Ellen Jane Burrows: I was wrong about you. I think you're a wonderful man. I wish it could've been different between us. I guess it just wasn't meant to be. Sorry.
 * Larry Joseph Burrows: [long pause as Ellen walks away] Wait a minute, that's bullshit! It was meant to be!

 * Cindy Jo Bumpers: I wish I'd known it was your birthday, I would have gotten you something.
 * Larry Joseph Burrows: Well, Cindy Jo, you've already given me more than you could possibly know. Really.

 * Larry Joseph Burrows: Thanks. Thanks for everything. The good and the bad. Boy, you sure do know how to make a point. Oh, and listen, Mike - whatever you've got planned for the rest of my life? It's perfect.
 * Mike the Bartender: [toasts] Happy birthday, Larry.

 * [last lines]
 * Mike the Bartender: Saw the game, kid. Tough break.
 * Young Larry Burrows: You said it, mister. I blew it good.
 * Mike the Bartender: Don't worry too much about it. Remember, you've got your whole life to look forward to. Things will work out just fine. Trust me.
 * Young Larry Burrows: [walking away] Old fart. What the hell does he know?

Taglines

 * Would you give up everything you have... for everything you've ever wanted? Then meet...
 * Larry Burrows wished for it all... until all that he wished for came true!
 * A totally magical comedy!

Cast

 * Jim Belushi — Larry Joseph Burrows/Narrator
 * Linda Hamilton — Ellen Jane Burrows/Robertson
 * Michael Caine — Mike the Bartender at Universal Joint Bar/Angel
 * Jon Lovitz — Clip Metzler, Larry's Best Friend
 * Hart Bochner — Niles Pender
 * Bill McCutcheon — Leo Hansen, CEO Liberty Republic Sporting Goods/Cyndi Jo's Father
 * Rene Russo — Cindy Jo Bumpers
 * Jay O. Sanders — Jackie Earle Bumpers, Company President aka 'Cement Head'
 * Maury Chaykin — Guzelman, Building Contractor
 * Pat Corley — Harry Burrows
 * Douglas Seale — Boswell, Burrows' Butler in Alternate Life
 * Courteney Cox — Jewel Jagger, Forklift operator/Larry's Secretary
 * Doug Barron — Lewis Flick
 * Jeff Weiss — Ludwig
 * Tony Longo — Huge Guy

title: Mr. Destiny