Images and Quotations: PART ONE

“They see poetry in what I have done. No, I apply my method and that is all there is to it.” -Rewald, Post-Impressionism, p. 86.

Georges-Pierre Seurat, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884 – 1886

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“Above all, don’t sweat over a painting; a great deal of sentiment can be rendered immediately.” - Gauguin, Writings of a Savage, p. 5.

Paul Gauguin, Matamoe, 1892

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“I am in the midst of a complicated calculation which results in a quick succession of canvases quickly executed but calculated long beforehand.”

– Van Gogh, Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, 2:606-7.

Vincent van Gogh, Starry Night, 1889

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Marcel Duchamp explained that his artistic goal was “to get away from the physical aspect of painting.” – Duchamp, Writings of Marcel Duchamp, p. 125.

Marcel Duchamp, Etant donnés tableau (The Large Glass), 1915-1923

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Charles Sheeler recalled that in 1929 he began “a period that followed for a good many years of planning a picture very completely before starting to work on the final canvas, having a blueprint of it and knowing exactly what it was going to be.”– Friedman, Charles Sheeler, p. 72.

Charles Sheeler, Amoskeag Canal, 1948

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Ad Reinhardt wrote in 1953 that a technical rule for painting should be that “every-thing, where to begin and where to end, should be worked out in the mind beforehand.”

– Stiles and Selz, Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, p. 89.

Ad Reinhardt, Red Painting, 1952

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Andy Warhol declared in 1963 that “the reason I’m painting this way is that I want to be a machine.” – Madoff, Pop Art, p. 104.

Andy Warhol, Two Elvis, 1963

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Sol LeWitt stated that in his art “all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair.” – Zavi, Sol LeWitt, p. 78.

Sol LeWitt, Brushstrokes, 2000

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Chuck Close explained that creating his images of faces from photographs is done methodically: “I have a system for how the head is going to fit into the rectangle. The head is going to be so bid, it is going to come so close to the top edge, and it is going to be centered left to right.”
–Lyons and Storr, Chuck Close, p. 29.

Chuck Close, Big Self-Portrait, 1967-1968

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Robert Smithson told an interviewer in 1969, “An object to me is the product of a thought.”
– Smithson, Robert Smithson, p. 43.

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970