Georges Braque Quotes

Truth exists; only lies are invented.

Thanks to the oval I have discovered the meaning of the horizontal and the vertical.

There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.

Art is a wound turned into light.

The painter thinks in terms of form and color. The goal is not to be concerned with the reconstitution of an anecdotal fact, but with constitution of a pictorial fact.

The painting is finished when the idea has disappeared.

Reality only reveals itself when it is illuminated by a ray of poetry.

A painting without something disturbing in it – what's that?.

If we had never met Picasso, would Cubism have been what it is? I think not. The meeting with Picasso was a circumstance in our lives.

Art is polymorphic. A picture appears to each onlooker under a different guise.

When objects shattered into fragments appeared in my painting about 1909, this for me was a way of getting closest to the object... Fragmentation helped me to establish space and movement in space.

Once an object has been incorporated in a picture it accepts a new destiny.

If I have called Cubism a new order, it is without any revolutionary ideas or any reactionary ideas... One cannot escape from one's own epoch, however revolutionary one may be.

Truth exists, only falsehood has to be invented.

Limited means often constitute the charm and force of primitive painting. Extension, on the contrary, leads the arts to decadence.

Art is made to trouble but science reassures.

Painting is a nail to which I fasten my ideas.

I have made a great discovery. I no longer believe in anything.

When one reaches this state of harmony between things and one's self, one reaches a state of perfect freedom and peace-which makes everything possible and right. Life becomes perpetual revelation.

With age, art and life become one.

Writing is not describing, painting is not depicting. Verisimilitude is merely an illusion.

The space between the dish and the pitcher, that I paint also.

Emotion should not be rendered by an excited trembling; it can neither be added on nor be imitated. It is the seed, the work is the flower.

I realized that one cannot reveal oneself without mannerism, without some evident trace of one's personality. But all the same one should not go too far in that direction.

I do not think my painting has ever been revolutionary. It was not directed against any kind of painting. I have never wanted to prove that I was right and someone else wrong.

Never join an organization.

In a painting, what counts is the unexpected.

Art is meant to disturb. Science reassures.

Illusions... are simple facts, but they have been created by the mind, by the spirit, and they are one of the justifications of the new spatial configuration.

We will never have repose. The present is perpetual.

One has to guard against a formula that is good for everything, that can interpret reality in addition to the other arts, and that rather than creating can only result in a style, or a stylization.

In art there is only one thing that counts: the bit that cannot be explained.

It is the limitation of means that determines style, gives rise to new forms and makes creativity possible.

It is not sufficient that what one paints should be made visible. It must be made tangible.

Art disturbs, science reassures.

There is more sensitivity in technique than in the rest of the picture.

Scientific perspective forces the objects in a picture to disappear away from the beholder instead of bringing them within his reach as painting should.

The function of Art is to disturb. Science reassures.

I am interposing overlaid planes a short way off... To make it understood that things are in front of each other instead of being scattered in space.

Evidence exhausts the truth.

Work to perfect the mind. There is no certitude but in what the mind conceives.

Colour could give rise to sensations which would interfere with our conception of space.

Colour acts simultaneously with form, but has nothing to do with form.

Nature is a mere pretext for a decorative composition, plus sentiment. It suggests emotion, and I translate that emotion into art.

You put a blob of yellow here, and another at the further edge of the canvas: straight away a rapport is established between them. Colour acts in the way that music does.

Perspective is a ghastly mistake which it has taken four centuries to redress.

I do not believe in things. I believe in relationships.

To work from nature is to improvise.

Poetry is to a painting what life is to man.

I do not believe in objects. I believe only in their relationships.