I met a lot of artists – but then I met Gorky. I had some training in Holland, quite a training, the Academy. Gorky didn’t have that at all. He came from no place; he came here (US) when he was sixteen, from Tiflis in Georgia, with an Armenian upbringing. And for some mysterious reason, he knew lots more about painting and art – he just knew it by nature... He had an extraordinary gift for hitting the nail on the head; very remarkable. So I immediately attached myself to him and we became very good friends. It was nice to be foreigners meeting in some new place.
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interview conducted by David Sylvester for the BBC, 1962; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism, Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York 1990, p. 44Willem de Kooning
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As for a few others, the vital task was a wedding of abstraction and surrealism. Out of these opposites something new could emerge, and Gorky’s work is a part of the evidence that this is true. What he felt, I suppose, was a sense of polarity, not of dichotomy; that opposites could exist simultaneously within a body, within a painting or within an entire art... These are the opposites poles in his work. Logic and irrationality; violence and gentleness; happiness and sadness, surrealism and abstraction. Out of these elements I think Gorky evolved his style.
Adolph Gottlieb
It is very difficult for us, placed as we have been from earliest childhood in a condition of training, to say what would have been our feelings had such training never taken place.
Sir George Stokes
Today I know that physical training should have as much place in the curriculum as mental training.
Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi
When I first met Kate I knew there was something very special about her. I knew there was possibly something that I wanted to explore there. But we ended up being friends for a while and that was a good foundation.
I do generally believe now that being friends with one another is a massive advantage. It just went from there. I knew over the years, I knew that things were getting better and better and we went through a few stumbling blocks as every relationship does, but we picked ourselves up and carried on. From were you had the odd problem when you are first getting to know each other, those have all gone and it is just really easy being with each other, it is really fun and I'm extremely funny and she loves that so it's been good.Prince of Wales William
I wrote it [Maurice] neither for my friends or the public—but because it was weighing on me; and my previous training made me write it as literature, though for a long time I meant to show it no one at all. [...] I am much dependant on criticism and now, backed by you and some others, do feel that I have created something absolutely new, even to the Greeks. Whitman nearly anticipated me but he didn't really know what he was after, or only half knew—shirked, even to himself, the statement.
E. M. Forster
Kooning, Willem de
Koontz, Dean R.
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