Balthus Quotes

I always feel the desire to look for the extraordinary in ordinary things; to suggest, not to impose, to leave always a slight touch of mystery in my paintings.
BALTHUS

Art Desire Ordinary
I had only planned to strike the gong violently in order to somehow shake people up and make them more aware. I think I succeeded.
BALTHUS

Order People Thinking
One must always draw, draw with the eyes, when one cannot draw with a pencil.
BALTHUS

Drawing Eye Sketching
Painting is a language which cannot be replaced by another language. I don’t know what to say about what I paint, really.
BALTHUS

Art Language Painting
Painting is the passage from the chaos of the emotions to the order of the possible.
BALTHUS

Chaos Emotion Order
Painting is a source of endless pleasure, but also of great anguish.
BALTHUS

Art Painting Pleasure
The best way to begin is to say: ‘Balthus is a painter of whom nothing is known. And now let us have a look at the paintings’.
BALTHUS

Looks Painting Way
If you speak of beauty, you are at once suspected of…kitsch.
BALTHUS

Beauty Kitsch Speak Suspect
I will always find even the worst paintings that attempt some kind of representation better than the best invented paintings.
BALTHUS

Kind Painting Worst
I refuse to confide and don’t like it when people write about art.
BALTHUS

Art People Writing
The craft of painting has virtually disappeared. There is hardly anyone left who really possesses it. For evidence one has only to look at the painters of this century.
BALTHUS

Crafts Looks Painting
Painting what I experience, translating what I feel, is a great liberation. But it is also work, self-examination, consciousness, criticism, struggle.
BALTHUS

Criticism Self Struggle

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