Francesco Clemente Quotes

Painting is like making love. You cannot ask, 'How do you do it?' But, hopefully, it is beautiful.

Fashion is the pursuit of perfection, Style is the acceptance of one's flaws.

My portraits are half what I see and the other half is invented or dictated by the person and the painting.

I never paint a portrait from a photograph, because a photograph doesn't give enough information about what the person feels.

I repeatedly refuse to make any practical decisions. I get a feeling of nausea about practicality.

When you sit for an hour and a half in front of somebody, he or she shows about twenty faces. And so it's this crazy chase of, Which face? Which one is the one?

There's poetry in the world. Poetry doesn't belong just to the poets. You know, you can look at the most premeditated, cold blooded movie and find poetry in it.

It is very scary to think mechanically about someone you know. That means that the second time you meet a person is useless. Which I tend to believe anyway.

When I look at a drawing of a person, I look at that person as living.

To me the poets are closer than I am to the idea of voice, to a sort of primeval song that we all participate in.

And dilettantism is a humorous way to survive. Everybody understands you for it and everybody hates you for it. And not everybody chooses to be a dilettante. Many choose cunning and brute force.

That moment when the person actually dictates the way I do the portrait is when the intimacy arrives.

I first think of intelligence. You need it for surviving in Italy because Italy is so pompous.