The Academies of Art are nothing but great painting factories – those with talent are fed in at one end, and they come out as mechanical painting machines.
Painting picture by picture, I followed the impressions my eye took in at heightened moments. I painted only memories, adding nothing, no details that I did not see. Hence the simplicity of the paintings, their emptiness.
Certainly a chair can be just as interesting as a human being. But first the chair must be perceived by a human being… You should not paint the chair, but only what someone has felt about it.
I build a kind of wall between myself and t he model so that I can paint in peace behind it. Otherwise, she might say something that confuses and distracts me.
I learned early about the misery and dangers of life, and about the afterlife, about the external punishment which awaited the children of sin in Hell.
