Robert Henri Quotes - 54 quotes

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Robert Henri

Robert Henri (1865-1929) was an influential American painter and teacher. He is best known as a leader of the Ashcan School, a movement that focused on depicting the gritty realities of urban life in early 20th-century America. He was born Robert Henry Cozad on June 24, 1865, in Cincinnati, Ohio. H... show more

quote icon We must paint only what is important to us, must not respond to outside demands. They do not know what they want, or what we have to give.

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quote icon You are to give the craftsman in you a motive, else he cannot develop.

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quote icon The study of art is the study of the relative value of things.

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quote icon When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and he opens ways for a better understanding. Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it, shows there are still more pages possible.

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quote icon The work of the art student is no light matter. Few have the courage and stamina to see it through.

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quote icon It is not enough to have thought great things before doing the work. The brush stroke at the moment of contact carries inevitably the exact state of being of the artist at that exact moment into the work...

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quote icon Don't worry about the rejections. Everybody that's good has gone through it.

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quote icon It is all very fine to have your pictures hung, but you are painting for yourself, not for the jury.

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quote icon Through art mysterious bonds of understanding and of knowledge are established among men.

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quote icon The work is done when that special thing has been said.

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quote icon The most vital things in the look of a face or of a landscape endure only for a moment. Work should be done from memory...All work done from the subject thereafter must be no more than data gathering. The subject is now in another mood. A new series of relations has been established. These may confound. The memory of that special look must be held...

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quote icon The picture must not become a patchwork of parts of various moods. The original mood must be held to.

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quote icon No vacillating or uncertain interest can produce a unity.

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quote icon We have proved that thirty minutes of high-pitched mentality and spirit is worth more than a whole week below par.

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quote icon It is not important whether one's vision is as great as that of another. It is a personal question as to whether one shall live in and deal with his greatest moments of happiness.

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quote icon All the beauty that can exist in the background rests in its relation to the figure.

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quote icon We are instinctively blind to what is not relative. We are not cameras. We select. We do this always when we are not painting. When you are sitting in conversation with a young girl and are thinking the while how beautiful she is, suddenly stop and ask yourself what has been her background.

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quote icon Every movement in nature is orderly, one thing the outcome of another, a matter of constructive, growing force. We live our lives in tune with nature when we are happy, and all our misery is the result of our effort to dictate against nature.

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quote icon The human family has not yet come out of the woods. We were more barbarian, we are still barbarians. Sometimes in the past we shot ahead, in certain ways, ahead of where we are now. We gave flashes of what is possible in man. We have yet as a body to come up to the art of living.

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quote icon If a man has the soul of an artist he needs a mastery of all the means of expression so that he may command them, for with his soul in activity he has much to say.

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quote icon The mind is a tool, it is either clogged, bound, rusty, or it is a clear way to and from the soul.

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quote icon If you do not act on a suggestion at first, you grow dull to its message.

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quote icon Artists must be men of wit, consciously or unconsciously philosophers, read, study, think a great deal of life...

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quote icon Art is certainly not a pursuit for anyone who wants to make money. There are ever so many better ways...If one is a painter this purest freedom must exist at the time of painting. This is as much as to say that a painter may give up his hope of making his living as a painter but must make it some other way. This is generally true, although some do, by a freak of appreciation, make enough while going their way to live sufficiently well. Perhaps this happens, but I am not sure but that there is some curtailing of the purity of the freedom.

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quote icon Everything depends on the attitude of the artist toward his subject. It is the one great essential.

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quote icon There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom.

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quote icon The artist should have a powerful will. He should be powerfully possessed by one idea. He should be intoxicated with the idea of the thing he wants to express. If his will is not strong he will see all kinds of unessential things.

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quote icon Work with great speed. Have your energies alert, up and active. Finish as quickly as you can. There is no virtue in delaying.

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quote icon I myself have found it useful to work on two canvases, alternating between them...

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quote icon No feature should be started until you have fully comprehended its character and have established in your mind the manner of its full accomplishment.

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quote icon The brain can prove to be a wonderful tool, can be a willing slave, as has been evidenced by some men, but of course it works poorly when it has not the habit of usage.

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quote icon An artist should not be afraid of his tools.

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quote icon The subject is beauty - or happiness, and man's approach to it is various.

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quote icon A person living in squalor eventually gets used to it.

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quote icon I am not interested in art as a means of making a living, but I am interested in art as a means of living a life.

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quote icon Art is certainly not a pursuit for anyone who wants to make money. There are ever so many better ways.

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quote icon It is true, no doubt, that if my writer is deflected from writing to dancing or painting, somewhat of his genius will appear in these arts.

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quote icon You can do anything you want to do. What is rare is this actual wanting to do a specific thing: wanting it so much that you are practically blind to all other things, that nothing else will satisfy you.

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quote icon Things are not done beautifully. The beauty is an integral part of their being done.

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quote icon The whole fact is that art and science are so close akin that they might very well be lumped together. They are certainly necessary to each other and the delights of either pursuit should satisfy any man.

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quote icon The picture that looks as if it were done without an effort may have been a perfect battlefield in its making.

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quote icon Like to do your work as much as a dog likes to gnaw a bone and go at it with equal interest and exclusion of everything else.

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quote icon If you want to know how to do a thing you must first have a complete desire to do the thing. Then go to kindred spirits - others who have wanted to do that thing - and study their ways and means, learn from their successes and failures and add your quota.

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quote icon Whoever approaches a child without humility, without wonderment and without infinite respect, misses his judgment of what is before him...Children are greater than the grown man. All grown men have more experience, but only a very few retain the greatness that was theirs before the system of compromises began in their lives.

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quote icon I was once asked by a young artist whether he could hope to make any money out of his work if he continued in his particular style of painting. He happened to be a man of considerable talent and had great enthusiasm for his work. But I knew there was no public enthusiasm for such work. I remembered he had told me that before he got really into art he had made a living by designing labels for cans, tomato cans and the like. I advised him to make tomato-can labels and live well that he might be free to paint as he liked.

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quote icon Art is certainly not a pursuit for anyone who wants to make money. There are ever so many better ways...If one is a painter this purest freedom must exist at the time of painting. This is as much as to say that a painter may give up his hope of making his living as a painter but must make it some other way. This is generally true, although some do, by a freak of appreciation, make enough while going their way to live sufficiently well. Perhaps this happens, but I am not sure but that there is some curtailing of the purity of the freedom. I was once asked by a young artist whether he could hope to make any money out of his work if he continued in his particular style of painting. He happened to be a man of considerable talent and had great enthusiasm for his work. But I knew there was no public enthusiasm for such work. I remembered he had told me that before he got really into art he had made a living by designing labels for cans, tomato cans and the like. I advised him to make tomato-can labels and live well that he might be free to paint as he liked.

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quote icon Find out what you really like if you can. Find out what is really important to you. Then sing your song. You will have something to sing about and your whole heart will be in the singing.

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quote icon We are not here to do what has already been done.

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quote icon We like sympathy and we like to be in company. It is easier than going alone. But alone one gets acquainted with himself, grows up and on, not stopping with the crowd.

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quote icon A work of art which inspires us comes from no quibbling or uncertain man.

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quote icon For an artist to be interesting to us he must have been interesting to himself. He must have been capable of intense feeling, and capable of profound contemplation.

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quote icon Perhaps we delight in the evening because we have had the day.

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quote icon I love the tools made for mechanics. I stop at the windows of hardware stores. If I could only find an excuse to buy many more of them than I have already bought on the mere pretense that I might have a use for them! They are so beautiful, so simple and so plain and straight to their meaning. There is no "art" about them, they have not been made beautiful, they are beautiful.

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quote icon Do whatever you do intensely.

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