While I recognize the necessity for a basis of observed reality... true art lies in a reality that is felt.

The painter is not an intellectual if, when he has painted a nude woman, he gives us the idea that she is just about to put her clothes back on.

The value of art lies in its power to increase our moral force or establish its heightening influence.

My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of the undetermined.

It is precisely from the regret left by the imperfect work that the next one can be born.

I have often, as an exercise and as a sustenance, painted before an object down to the smallest accidents of its visual appearance; but the day left me sad and with an unsatiated thirst. The next day I let the other source run, that of imagination, through the recollection of the forms and I was then reassured and appeased.

One must respect black. Nothing prostitutes it.