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.
Henri Matisse
» Henri Matisse - all quotes »
Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the diverse elements at the painter's command to express his feelings.
Henri Matisse
The same feeling (he saw a work of A. Ryder for the very first time, fh)) came over me in the given degree as came out of the Emerson’s Essays when they were first given to me I I felt as I have read a page of the Bible in both cases. All my essential Yankee qualities we re brought forth out of this picture and if I needed to be stamped an American this was the first picture that had done this – for it had in it everything that I knew and had experienced about my own New England – even though I had never lived by the sea – it had in it the stupendous solemnity of a Blake (English religious painter, fh) picture and it had a sense of realism besides that bore such a force of nature itself as to leave me breathless.
Marsden Hartley
An example: if I compose a picture using as objects a scrap of bark, a scrap of butterfly wing and a purely imaginary form, you probably won’t recognise the bark, or the butterfly wing, and you’ll say: ‘What does this stand for? It is an abstract picture. No it’s a representational picture’.. ..There is no such thing as ‘abstract’, or ‘concrete’ either. There is a good picture and a bad picture. There is the picture that moves you and the picture that leaves you cold.. ..A picture has a value in itself, like a musical score, like a poem.
Fernand Leger
Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind's eye and you will be drawn toward it. Picture yourself vividly as defeated and that alone will make victory impossible. Picture yourself vividly as winning, and that alone will contribute immeasurably to success. Do not picture yourself as anything and you will drift like a derelict.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
Since one cannot create "real depth" by carving a hole in the picture, and since one should not attempt to create the illusion of depth by tonal gradation, depth as a plastic reality must be two dimensions in a formal sense as well in the sense of color. "Depth" is not created on a flat surface as an illusion, but as a plastic reality. The nature of the picture plane makes it possible to achieve depth without destroying the two-dimensional essence of the picture plane. ... A plane is a fragment in the architecture of space. When a number of planes are opposed one to another, a spatial effect results. A plane functions in the same manner as the walls of a building. ... Planes organized within a picture create the pictorial space of its composition. ... The old masters were plane-consciousness. This makes their pictures restful as well as vital...
Hans Hofmann
Matisse, Henri
Matsui, Iwane
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z