Paul Gauguin quotes:

It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block.

The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.

Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one's will. Virtue, good, evil are nothing but words, unless one takes them apart in order to build something with them; they do not win their true meaning until one knows how to apply them.

Concentrate your strengths against your competitor's relative weaknesses.

There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite.

Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise, what would become of beauty?

A nude by Degas is chaste. But his women wash in tubs!...

I sit at my door, smoking a cigarette and sipping my absinthe, and I enjoy every day without a care in the world

Sometimes people accuse me of being incomprehensible only because they look for an explicative side to my pictures which is not there.

Life is hardly more than a fraction of a second. Such a little time to prepare oneself for eternity!

There are two sorts of beauty; one is the result of instinct, the other of study. A combination of the two, with the resulting modifications, brings with it a very complicated richness, which the art critic ought to try to discover.

Proficiency in art is a contract with your self and the empowerment of your self. Not all of us demand or even desire proficiency, but for those who do it's necessary to temper the influence of groups. And while some artists think history is bunk, the historical evidence is overwhelming: "In my isolation I grow stronger."

Color! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams.

Wherever I go I need a period of incubation so that I may learn the essence of nature, which never wishes to be understood or yield herself.

Color which, like music, is a matter of vibrations, reaches what is most general and therefore most indefinable in nature: its inner power.

The cyclone ends. The sun returns; the lofty coconut trees lift up their plumes again; man does likewise. The great anguish is over; joy has returned; the sea smiles like a child.

A meter of green is greener than a centimeter.

Lacking many of the essential implements, it irritated me to be reduced to impotence in the face of artistic projects to which I had passionately given myself.

Do not finish your work too much. An impression is not sufficiently durable for its first freshness to survive a belated search for infinite detail; in this way you let the lava grow cool...

Let everything about you breathe the calm and peace of the soul.

The flat sound of my wooden clogs on the cobblestones, deep, hollow and powerful, is the note I seek in my painting.

There are noble tones, ordinary ones, tranquil harmonies, consoling ones, others which excite by their vigour.

There are tonalities which are noble and others which are vulgar, harmonies which are calm or consoling, and others which are exciting because of their boldness.

In art, all who have done something other than their predecessors have merited the epithet of revolutionary; and it is they alone who are masters.

Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.

My eyes close and uncomprehendingly see the dream in the infinite space that stretches away, elusive, before me.

Soon I'll be old and I've done precious little in this world for lack of time. I am always afraid I'll become senile before I've finished what I've undertaken.

Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one's will.

Nothing so resembles a daub as a masterpiece.

I have always wanted a mistress who was fat, and I have never found one. To make a fool of me, they are always pregnant.

Stressing output is the key to improving productivity, while looking to increase activity can result in just the opposite.

is either plagiarism or revolution.

Nail up some indecency in plain sight over your door; from that time forward you will be rid of all respectable people,the most insupportable folk God has created.

How do you see those tree?... They are yellow. Well then put down yellow. And that shadow is rather blue. So render it with pure ultramarine. Those red leaves? Use vermillion.

When the physical organism breaks up, the soul survives. It then takes on another body.

The single most powerful tool for winning a negotiation is the ability to get up and walk away from the table without a deal

I shut my eyes in order to see.

The self-esteem one acquires and a well-earned feeling of one's strength are the only consolation in this world. Income, after all, most brutes have that.

Today one can dare anything, and, furthermore, nobody is surprised.

Many excellent cooks are spoilt by going into the arts.

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

Oh yes! He loved yellow, did good Vincent...When the two of us were together in Arles, both of us insane, and constantly at war over beautiful colors, I adored red; where could I find a perfect vermilion?

A bit of advice, don't copy nature too closely. Art is an abstraction; as you dream amid nature, extrapolate art from it, and concentrate on what you will create as a result.

A critic in my house sees some paintings. Greatly perturbed, he asks for my drawings. My drawings? Never! They are my letters, my secrets.

A critic is someone who meddles with something that is none of his business.

A great sentiment can be rendered immediately. Dream on it and look for the simplest form in which you can express it.

A hint - don't paint too much direct from nature. Art is an abstraction! study nature then brood on it and treasure the creation which will result, which is the only way to ascend towards God - to create like our Divine Master.

A time will come when people will think I am a myth, or rather something the newspapers have made up.

All the joys - animal and human - of a free life are mine. I have escaped everything that is artificial, conventional, customary.

And here in my isolation I can grow stronger. Poetry seems to come of itself, without effort, and I need only let myself dream a little while painting to suggest it.

Art = a mad search for individualism.

Art is either a plagiarist or a revolutionist.

Art is either revolution or plagiarism

Beautiful colors exist, though we do not realize it, and are glimpsed behind the veil that modesty has drawn over them.

Beware of luxury! Beware of acquiring the taste and need for it, under the pretext of providing for the morrow...

But I owe something to Vincent, and that is, in the consciousness of having been useful to him, the confirmation of my own original ideas about painting. And also, at difficult moments, the remembrance that one finds others unhappier than oneself.

By the combination of lines and colors, under the pretext of some motif taken from nature, I create symphonies and harmonies that represent nothing absolutely real in the ordinary sense of the word but are intended to give rise to thoughts as music does.

Civilization is paralysis.

Civilization is what makes you sick.

Do not copy nature too much. Art is an abstraction.

Do not copy nature. Art is an abstraction. Rather, bring your art forth by dreaming in front of her and think more of creation.

Do you know what will soon be the ultimate in truth?

Do you know what will soon be the ultimate in truth? - photography, once it begins to reproduce colors, and that won't be long in coming. And yet you want an intelligent man to sweat for months so as to give the illusion he can do something as well as an ingenious little machine can!

Follow the masters! But why should one follow them? The only reason they are masters is that they didn't follow anybody!

for Christ's sake, were the mountains blue, then chuck on some blue and don't go telling me that it was a blue a bit like this or like that, it was blue wasn't it? Good - make them blue and that's enough!

Go on working, freely and furiously, and you will make progress.

Happiness and work rose up together with the sun, radiant like it.

Having the certitude of a succession of days... equally free and beautiful, peace descends on me.

How to re-light the fire the very ashes of which are scattered?

However depressed I may be I am not in the habit of giving up a project without having tried everything, even the 'impossible', to gain my end.

I am a great artist and I know it. It's because I am that I have endured such sufferings.

I am a great artist and I know it. It's because of what I am that I have endured so much suffering, so as to pursue my vocation, otherwise I would consider myself a rogue - which is what many people think I am, for that matter.

I am entering into the truth, into nature.

I am leaving in order to have peace and quiet. To be rid of the influence of civilization. I only want to do simple, very simple art and to be able to do that, I have to immerse myself in virgin nature, see no one but savages, live their life, with no other thought in my mind but to render, the way a child would, the concepts formed in my brain and to do this with the aid of nothing but the primitive means of art, the only means that are good and true.

I have come to an unalterable decision - to go and live forever in Polynesia. Then I can end my days in peace and freedom, without thoughts of tomorrow and this eternal struggle against idiots.

I have tried to establish the right to dare everything.

I made a promise to keep a watch over myself, to remain master of myself, so that I might become a sure observer.

I must confess that I too am a woman and that I am always prepared to applaud a woman who is more daring than I, and is equal to a man in fighting for freedom of behavior.

I plunged eagerly and passionately into the wilderness, as if in the hope of thus penetrating into the very heart of this Nature, powerful and maternal, there to blend with her living elements.

I was aware that on my skill as a painter would depend the physical and moral possession of the model...

I'd like to write the way I do my paintings, that is, as fantasy takes me, as the moon dictates.

If I did what has already been done, I would be a plagiarist and would consider myself unworthy; so I do something different and people call me a scoundrel. I'd rather be a scoundrel than a plagiarist!

If you see a tree as blue, then make it blue.

In art one is concerned with the condition of the spirit for three quarters of the time; one must therefore care for oneself if he wishes to make something great and lasting.

In art there are only two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists

In art, there are only two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists. And in the end, doesn't the revolutionary's work become official, once the State takes it over?

In Europe men and women have intercourse because they love each other. In the South Seas they love each other because they have had intercourse. Who is right?

In order to produce something new, you have to return to the original source, to the childhood of mankind.

In painting one must search rather for suggestion than for description, as is done in music.

It is better to paint from memory, for thus your work will be your own...

It is useless to advise solitude for everyone; one must be strong enough to endure it and to work alone.

It is well for young men to have a model, but let them draw the curtain over it while they are painting.

It was so simple to paint things as I saw them; to put without special calculation a red close to a blue.

Life is merely a fraction of a second. An infinitely small amount of time to fulfill our desires, our dreams, our passions.

Literary poetry in a painter is something special, and is neither illustration nor the translation of writing by form.

Look closely at the Japanese; they draw admirably and yet in them you will see life outdoors and in the sun without shadows...

Machines have come, art has fled, and I am far from thinking photography can help us.

Many people say that I don't know how to draw because I don't draw particular forms. When will they understand that execution, drawing and color (in other words, style) must be in harmony with the poem?

My God! How terrible these money questions are for an artist!

Nature has mysterious infinities and imaginative power. It is always varying the productions it offers to us. The artist himself is one of nature's means.

Night is here. All is at rest. My eyes close in order to see without actually understanding the dream that flees before men infinite space; and I experience the languorous sensation produced by the mournful procession of my hopes.

No one wants my painting because it is different from other people's peculiar, crazy public that demands the greatest possible degree of originality on the painter's part and yet won't accept him unless his work resembles that of the others!

Oh mysterious world of all light, thou hast made a light shine within me, and I have grown in admiration of thy antique beauty, which is the immemorial youth of nature.

Oh mysterious world... I have become better for having understood and having loved thy human soul - a flower which has ceased to bloom and whose fragrance no one henceforth will breathe.

Oh yes! he loved yellow, this good Vincent, this painter from Holland - those glimmers of sunlight rekindled his soul, that abhorred the fog, that needed the warmth.

On an instrument you start from one tone. In painting you start from several.

One's state of mind is three-quarters of what counts, so it has to be carefully nurtured if you want to do something great and lasting.

Out in the sun, some painters are lined up. The first is copying nature, the second is copying the first, the third is copying the second... You see the sequence.

Painting is the most beautiful of all arts. In it, all sensations are condensed, at its aspect everyone may create romance at the will of his imagination, and at a glance have his soul invaded by the most profound memories, no efforts of memory, everything summed up in one moment. Complete art which sums up all the others and completes them.

Perhaps I have no talent, but all vanity aside - I do not believe that anyone makes an artistic attempt, no matter how small, without having a little - or there are many fools.

Poor artist! You gave away part of your soul when you painted the picture which you are now trying to dispose of.

Seek art and abstraction in nature by dreaming in the presence of it.

Silence! I am learning to know the silence of a Tahitian night.

Slyly, banteringly, but also overbearingly, the critic - the one who does not swallow anything whole, who waits until posterity has consecrated it before... howling - is among those who howl their admiration the way they howl their insults: don't be afraid, don't tremble - the beast doesn't have any nails or teeth, or even brain: it is stuffed...

Sooner or later people will learn to recognize your worth

Stay firmly in your path and dare; be wild two hours a day!

Take care not to step on the foot of a learned idiot. His bite is incurable.

Thanks to our cinctures and corsets we have succeeded in making an artificial being out of woman. She is an anomaly, and Nature herself, obedient to the laws of heredity, aids us in complicating and enervating her. We carefully keep her in a state of nervous weakness and muscular inferiority, and in guarding her from fatigue, we take away from her possibilities of development. Thus modeled on a bizarre ideal of slenderness to which, strangely enough, we continue to adhere, our women have nothing in common with us, and this, perhaps, may not be without grave moral and social disadvantages.

The critics can say stupid things and we can enjoy them, if we have the legitimate feeling of superiority - the satisfaction of a duty accomplished.

The great artist is a formulation of the greatest intelligence: he is the recipient of sensations which are the most delicate and consequently the most invisible expressions of the brain.