Best 129 quotes of Paul Gauguin on MyQuotes

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 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.

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

A meter of green is greener than a centimeter.

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 plagiarism or revolution.

Art is either revolution or plagiarism

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

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

A young man who is unable to commit a folly is already an old man.

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.

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

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

Concentrate your strengths against your competitor's relative weaknesses.

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 not copy nature too much. Art is an abstraction.

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.

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!

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 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.

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.

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

I am a great artist and I know it, it is because I am that I have been able to endure so much suffering.

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 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'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 instead of a figure you put the shadow only of a person, you have found an original starting point, that strangeness of which you have calculated.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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. And in the end, doesn't the revolutionary's work become official, once the State takes it over?

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