The Wisdom of Pablo Picasso

Art is the best possible introduction to the culture of the world.

Great art always suggests nobility of spirit.

Great paintings all have the same thing in common -- they convey the overflowing of creative imaginations and monumental compulsions.

Art! I love it for the buried hopes, the garnered memories, the tender feelings it can summon at a touch.

Painting is the supreme form of artistic expression because it is the most faithful mirror of its own existence.

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

Painting is superior to literature. A writer gives interest to slices of life's details. The artist organizes them and endows them with form.

I am always aware that I am engaged in an activity in which the brush can accomplish what the pen cannot.

We artists represent our fictions as though they were realities, while writers preach their realities as though they were fictions.

I try to make my paintings as reliable as history and as picturesque as fiction.

I often do for a figure exactly what a novelist does with a character he creates.

Art, like literature, is in need of heroes.

Art is valuable and enriching only so far as it is not born in artifice.

A work of art does not depend on the morality of its subjects, but on the faithful truth of the rendering of whatever it may be.

Realistic honesty in art is elegant idealism in the artist.

Meager imagination and uninspired realism have invaded modern art more to the point of becoming art's most serious obstacles.

Loud, long-winded art is pompousness.

I believe that the ages which are to follow this will surpass our possibilities of art. The art of today should embody the highest life of today for the use of today. For those who have gone before us do not need it, and those who will come after us will have something better.

A great artist is answerable only to God.

The ideal artist possesses alert senses and intelligence. a keen gift of humor, and a supreme gift of expression mature in spirit.

Every great artist has possessed exceptional moral strength.

An artist may have peculiarities of temperament, be shy, distrustful, irritable or violent, but he must never degenerate into the loneliness of old age.

The nearer an artist approaches greatness, the more successful is his treatment of simple themes.

I have always tried to give my work a refined simplicity.

Artists are men of many parts, consequently they are often inconsistent of style.

Good artists are above all things good workers, the faithful craftsmen of their work.

An original painting that is destined to survive often shows a restless spirit, combined with warmth of genuine feeling, undramatic monumentality and a grandeur of spiritual content.

Many of the paintings I see today seem derivative, petty and uninspired. Good art is always earth-bound no matter how clumsy the style.

An artist fails only when he sinks to insincerity.

An artist must renew his ideas by the simple honesty of his vision and by the courage of his analysis.

Every professional painter has his monotonous side, when all his pictures seem to have a stilted effect.

A great painting is as fluent and harmonious as the architecture of a tree.

An artist must strive to achieve a balance between realism and stylization, between the poetry of his means and the truth of his subjects. Thereafter his path is clear and he can paint with infallible accuracy entirely from memory and imagination.

A painter cannot paint what does not exist. He can only rediscover what has been lost, forgotten or misunderstood.

Artists should be judged by results, not by intentions.

The levelheaded, critically minded, sensible painter never grows famous. He grows rich.

Great talent is often smothered under the gold heaped upon it by the innumerable, rich, would-be art collectors of our age.

I often tell young people to learn in youth to withstand the fascination of money, and not to contemplate it with pleasure as if it were some precious thing. It is, in fact, glittering earth, and nothing more. It is unstable and fugitive. It flits from one to another, and is like the withered leaves which the wind drives to and fro, and collects here in one heap, there in another.

I see many modern paintings today that are alien to beauty, possessing a certain meagerness of spirit and lack of sensibility and without a spark of imagination.

An artist who has acquired great popularity often is an expert at understanding the popular mentality.

A thousand artists have made good livings with their sets of rubber stamps.

There are too many hackneyed themes in so-called popular art. Some of the pictures may have great painterly qualities, but they are rather empty, lacking vigor and solidity.

The plain truth is that the nearer an unknown (continued on page 236) Pablo Picasso(continued from page 98) artist's painting approaches genius, the fewer customers he obtains.

Too many artists today paint at extraordinary speed and with astonishing facility, but without insight into character. Their aim is purely material.

An amiable disposition, or the appearance thereof, is an important factor in an artist's career which contributes to material success. I am often unamiable, outspoken, difficult, and liable to fits of bad temper.

• • •

The struggle for fulfillment is the theme of all my best work.

Although I have become an admired master living in the snug security of success and fame, I am by no means a genius. I consider myself only moderately talented and much inferior to the great painters of the world. Luckily, I have never been regarded as a serious rival to anyone.

My versatility, boldness and realism as a painter have been highly praised. But to my eyes my work often seems coarse rather than realistic, and superficial rather than bold.

For many years I worried about dying forgotten and being buried at the public expense in a pauper's grave.

I am fundamentally an original artist in tune with the cultural discontents and attitudes of our age, but I often show a decided tendency to break away from the approved mold of modern society.

I stand aside in all the theoretical battles waged by artists. I am anxious to realize my work rather than create a school.

I am never interested whether the jury's verdict about my work is favorable or unfavorable. My enthusiasm for my work is all that I need.

I never pass harsh judgment on another's work. If I am not impressed, I try to avoid falsehood in my opinion on the work of the artist by preserving an absolute silence.

I have a curiously restless quality that does not reflect the self-doubt of an insecure mind but the creative spirit of a man sure of himself.

A man's downfall begins when he starts to be jealous of his contemporaries.

While many young painters imitate me, only a few understand me.

My work contains the whole soul of a man who has known the depths of life's mysteries, who has sought them as a lover, with joy, and reverence, and fear.

I often record life with profound compassion and exalt the greatness and anguish of the human situation with analytical realism.

Blame me if you wish, like or dislike me, but for pity's sake don't indict me for my grimly realistic work.

Stylistically I owe nothing to anyone, nor can my mentality be compared with that of any other artist.

I have always considered most of my work highly individual, stylistically unique, and purely Spanish in temper -- neither mystical nor ecstatic.

I have often been told by other artists that the painter can write one sentence in one picture but no more. He can record only one expression. It is for this reason that I have always paid great attention to the decorative design of my portraits.

Oddly enough, as I grow older my style grows brighter and my colors more glowing.

I think my style is more lively, elaborate and dramatic than many of the older masters because I pay greater attention to perspective, color, and the vanity of movement in my figures.

I have always sought to give new life to the picturesque tradition of art.

The style of my portraits is often softly sentimental because I have a special tenderness for pretty, hazel-eyed, exotic faces.

The human face is the subject of my deepest passion.

The dramatic and emotional features of my pictures are often dictated not by ideas but by direct observation.

When I work my life is a private domain, a separate existence, a world of my own, and I am its master.

My hunger for work is never appeased. I drain everything that surrounds me and rapidly overcome every obstacle about any subject I tackle.

I have lived to know that the secret of happiness is never to let your energies stagnate.

Intellectual preoccupation plays little part in my work. Feeling is more important. I subordinate everything to visual impression.

My sense of rhythm has enabled me to express my emotions in my work independently of my subject matter.

Sometimes my paintings are eminently restful and my attitude permits a readjustment of values.

My finest paintings are done when I work with buoyant unrestraint.

Sometimes my mind works too fast for my hand and this annoys me.

The more I elaborate my portraits, the less I describe the physical features and the more I transform them into vehicles of expression.

Have you ever thought of it? The memory of an eye is the most deathless of memories, because there, if anywhere, you catch a glimpse of the visible soul as it sits by the window.

I often make dead men seem real in my paintings -- and often surprisingly likable.

Great paintings are often remarkable for their terrifying psychological insights. A good painting with a faintly erotic overtone often has the greatest charm and tenderness.

I have an unquestioning faith in the expressive power of the human body, and an untiring devotion to the glories of the nude.

I have loved to paint women because I glorify woman, and treat woman's natural beauty with great enthusiasm, and I portray her sinister and evil aspects with understanding. For me, woman is not merely a favorite subject -- she is an essential content of life. I have always loved to portray the eternal beauty of youth in all its diversity and magnificence.

Among my friends I am a cultured humorist who can always amuse and add to the joy of life. I am humorously charming from start to finish.

My work is whimsical, tender, biting, garrulous -- because I often look at the world with the eyes of a satirist; I wear no rose-colored spectacles, and it is often a disillusioned picture that I draw.

I am one of the few artists in history who can use the weapon of satire without labored clumsiness.

Some of my pictures may have been weak, but my work has never been effeminate.

You may like my painting or you may not like it, but if you don't like the way I paint it there is something the matter with your eyes.

I always hope that I can achieve the fullest expression of my talent in the works of my old age.

I will go on working intensively until the last day of my life.

• • •

There has nearly always been a good woman behind every great man, and there is a good deal of truth in the saying that a man can be no greater than the woman he loves will let him be.

The man who truly loves, loves humbly and does not fear that another may be preferred, but that another may be worthier of preference than himself.

Desires are the pulses of the soul. As physicians judge by appetite, so may we by desires.

Glances are the first billets-doux of love.

We glorify the supremacy of a first love as though the heart did not require a training as varied as the intellect.

I am not one of those who do not believe in love at first sight, but I believe in taking a second look.

The modern Cupid is no longer blind, but clear-sighted, calculating and practical.

There are different kinds of love, but they all have the same aim: possession.

In love, she who gives her portrait promises the original.

• • •

My life has been a most extraordinary and vigorous adventure because I have been passionately fond of the pageantry of beautiful and romantic women, and have retained the fire of illusion.

I have always said it, nature meant to make woman as its masterpiece.

Beauty is worse than wine; it intoxicates both the holder and the beholder.

My taste forever refines in the study of woman.

The whisper of a beautiful woman can be heard farther than the loudest call of duty.

I always advise my friends to be circumspect in their liaisons with women. It is better to be seen at the theater with this woman than to be seen at Mass with that woman.

A man who has not some woman, somewhere, who believes in him, trusts him and loves him, has reached a point where self-respect is gone.

Men like women to reflect them, but the woman who can only reflect a man and is nothing in herself, will never be of much service to him.

A woman can be held by no stronger tie than the knowledge that she is loved.

Woman see through each other; and often we most admire her whom they most scorn.

Rejected lovers should never despair. There are 24 hours in a day, and not a moment in the 24 in which a woman may not change her mind.

If men knew all that women think, they would be 20 times more audacious.

Rascal! That word on the lips of a woman, addressed to a too-daring man, often means angel.

Woman is more constant in hatred than in love.

To glorify the common things of life, that is the grandest part of woman's work in this world.

Women are never stronger than when they arm themselves with their weakness.

Men always say more evil of a woman than there really is; and there is always more than is known.

I have never understood why women see chiefly the defects of a man of talent and the merits of a fool.

If women were humbler men would be honester.

Woman is an overgrown child that one amuses with toys, intoxicates with flattery, and seduces with promises.

It is vanity that renders the youth of women culpable, and their old age ridiculous.

When a man says he has a wife, it means that a wife has him.

Before marriage, woman is a queen; after marriage, a subject.

True modesty protects a woman better than her clothes.

Woman who don't have good teeth laugh only with their eyes.

The resistance of a woman is not always a proof of her virtue, but more frequently of her experience.

There are no women to whom virtue comes easier than those who possess no attractions.

Women enjoy more the pleasure they give than the pleasure they feel.

To be womanly is the greatest charm of woman.

A woman dies twice: the day she quits life and the day that she ceases to please.

• • •

We should go into the world with small expectations and infinite patience.

I do not have so great a struggle with my vices, great and numerous as they are, as I have with my impatience. My efforts are not absolutely useless; yet I have never been able to conquer this ferocious wild beast.

I have acquired the habit of looking for the silver lining of the cloud, and when I have found it continue to look at it, rather than at the gray in the middle. It has helped me over many hard places.

Unless a man has trained himself for his chance, the chance will only make him ridiculous.

Many do with opportunities as children do at the seashore: they fill their little hands with sands, and then let the grains fall through, one by one, till all are gone.

I think it is wise advice to those who desire to go hopefully and cheerfully through their work in this life that they should take short views, not plan too far ahead, take the present blessing and be thankful for it.

Good and bad fortunes are equally necessary to develop the powers of the soul.

I like to compare faith to gold; but faith is much more noble than gold. As gold is the more precious metal in mortal things, so faith excels the most in spiritual things.

I bear every trial with courage and good humor and possess an amazing zest for life. I have never been a repressed person.

I am probably the most aggressively modest man of the century.

It is curious to think how often our needless fears, which cause so much unnecessary anxiety and misery, are the result of pure miscalculation; and this miscalculation not made in a hurry, but deliberately.

The coin most current among mankind is flattery, the only benefit of which is, that by hearing what we are not, we may learn what we ought to be.

I cannot help suspecting that those who abuse themselves are in reality angling for approbation.

I often hear people praised for good feelings. They say that so-and-so is a man who has good feelings. Now, let me tell you that there are people in this world who get a good name simply on account of their feelings. You can't tell one generous action they ever performed in their lives; but they can look and talk most benevolently. I know a man whom you would call a rough and unamiable man, and yet he has done more acts of kindness than all of those good-feeling people put together. You may judge people's actions by their feelings; but I judge people's feelings by their actions.

All my life I have tried to be as active as possible, near to everyone and everything, and eager to see and possess. I feel much more than curiosity and interest in others.

True friendship can only be made between true men. Hearts are the soul of honor. There can be no lasting friendship between bad men. Bad men may pretend to love each other, but their friendship is a rope of sand, which can be broken at any convenient time.

For me, nature is a human theme, a source of reverie, which reduces the infinite complexity of the world to an intellectual unity.

I see nature as something passionate, stormy, uneasy and dramatic, like my own soul.

It is not unusual for captains, in time of war, to start on a voyage under sealed orders, not to be opened till they reach a certain place. So we all sail under sealed orders, not knowing our destination till the last port is made, and heaven or hell is gained.

I am not an intellectual skeptic, and I am not a mystic whose philosophy is fatalism. I am a philosopher who seeks escape from the misunderstanding of the world in the life of an artist.

There was an ancient custom of putting an hourglass into the coffin of the dead to signify that their time had run out -- a useless notification to them. I would like to put an hourglass into the hand of every living man, and show him the grains gliding steadily out.

A man's happiness and success in life will depend not so much upon what he has, or upon what position he occupies, as upon what he is, and the heart he carries into his position.

If we only knew how little some enjoy the great things they possess, there would not be much envy in the world.

Recently I showed a priest my fine house, gardens, statues, pictures, and so on. And the priest said to me, "Ah, Picasso, these are the things which make a deathbed terrible!"

Youth is not like a new garment which we can keep fresh and fair by wearing sparingly. Youth, while we have it, we must wear daily, for it will wear away fast.

Old age is a courtier. He knocks again and again at the window and at the door, and makes us everywhere conscious of his presence. Woe to the man who becomes old without becoming wise. There is not a more repulsive spectacle than an old man who will not forsake the world, which has already forsaken him.

This disordered universe is the picture of your own mind. We make a wilderness by encouraging artificial wants, by creating sensitive and selfish feelings; then we project everything stamped with the impress of our own feelings, and we gather the whole of creation into our pained being.

If happiness were an attainment of the mind, to be acquired, as a science or an art is learned from the teacher, no place could contain the crowds that would flock to the school. But there is no such school. Each must learn the lesson by himself.

The idea has been transmitted from generation to generation that happiness is one large and beautiful precious stone -- a single gem, so rare that all search after it is vain, all effort for it hopeless. It is not so. Happiness is a mosaic composed of many smaller stones. Each, taken apart and viewed singly, may be of little value; but when all are grouped together, and carefully combined and set, they form a pleasing and graceful whole -- a costly jewel.

I often remind myself of the Romans who painted Honor in the Temple of Apollo as representing the form of a man, with a rose in his right hand, a lily in his left, above him a marigold, and under him wood, with the inscription, Levate -- consider. The rose denotes that man flourishes as a flower, but at length is withered and cast away. The lily denotes the favor of man, which is easily lost, and is soon of no account. The marigold shows fickleness of prosperity. The wood signifies that all the delights of the world are sweet in execution but bitter in retribution. Levate -- consider what lesson of earthly vanity is here!