Since the model he so faithfully copies is not going to be hung up next to the picture... it is of no interest whether it is an accurate copy of the model.
Lucian FreudRead
The painter makes real to others his innermost feelings about all that he cares for. A secret becomes known to everyone who views the picture through the intensity with which it is felt.
Interpretation
Art conveys the artist's deepest emotions and thoughts, allowing viewers to connect with those feelings.
This quote emphasizes the profound connection between an artist and their work, suggesting that a painter's art is an expression of their deepest emotions and personal experiences. When viewers engage with a painting, they can sense the intensity of the artist's feelings, which transforms personal secrets into shared experiences, making the unseen known through the medium of art.
In practice
In a discussion about the impact of art at a gallery opening.
Since the model he so faithfully copies is not going to be hung up next to the picture... it is of no interest whether it is an accurate copy of the model.
When I look at a body it gives me choice of what to put in a painting, what will suit me and what won't. There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so.
It is the only point of getting up every morning: to paint, to make something good, to make something even better than before, not to give up, to compete, to be ambitious.
The character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art
I paint people, not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be.
I could never put anything into a picture that wasn't actually there in front of me. That would be a pointless lie, a mere bit of artfulness.
There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.
Music can speak louder than words, and I will use my music to speak out on behalf of children everywhere.
Why, I just shake the buildings out of my sleeves.
I, too, am interested in identity and Islam, which is what people expect of us. But one must not write what is expected. It's important for North African writers to show they have other things to say.
Swing is extreme coordination. It's a maintaining balance, equilibrium. It's about executing very difficult rhythms with a panache and a feeling in the context of very strict time. So, everything about the swing is about some guideline and some grid and the elegant way that you negotiate your way through that grid.
I write because it is dangerous, a bloody risk, like love, to form the words, to say the words, to touch the source, to be touched, to reveal how vulnerable we are, how transient.
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