4 Henri Matisse Quotes on Truth

Henri Matisse quotes on truth

1. Slowly I discovered the secret of my art. It consists of a meditation on nature, on the expression of a dream which is always inspired by reality. With more involvement and regularity, I learned to push each study in a certain direction. Little by little the notion that painting is a means of expression asserted itself, and that one can express the same thing in several ways. Exactitude is not truth, Delacroix liked to say.

2. I will repeat what I once said to Guillaume Apollinaire: 'For my part I have never avoided the influence of others. I would have considered it cowardice and a lack of sincerity toward myself.'

24. A musician once said: In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer understands what one is doing or what one knows, and when there remains an energy that is all the stronger for being constrained, controlled and compressed. It is therefore necessary to present oneself with the greatest humility: white, pure and candid with a mind as if empty, in a spiritual state analogous to that of a communicant approaching the Lord's Table. Obviously it is necessary to have all of one's experience behind one, but to preserve the freshness of one's instincts.

37. The artist only sees old truths in a new light,because there are no new truths.