Quotes by Max Beckmann

Max Beckmann

Art is creative for the sake of realization, not for amusement… for transfiguration, not for the sake of play.

Art

Creative

Play

I am seeking for the bridge which leans from the visible to the invisible through reality.

Bridges

Invisible

Reality

I am working here (in Amsterdam) on my last big triptych, which will be a tremendous story, and which gives me a more intense life and exhilaration. My God, life is worth living!

Exhilaration

Giving

Lasts

I believe the reason I love painting so much is that it forces one to be objective.

Believe

Objectivity

Painting

I hardly need to abstract things, for each object is unreal enough already, so unreal that I can only make it real by means of painting.

Enough Already

Mean

Real

I have never, God or whatever knows, prostrated myself to be famous, but I would meander through all the sewers of the world, through all degradations and humiliations, in order to paint. I have to do this. Until the last drop every vision that exists in my being must be purged; then it will be a pleasure for me to be rid of this damned torture

Degradation

Order

Vision

I think only of objects: of a leg or an arm, of the wonderful sense of foreshortening, breaking through the plane, of the division of space, of the combination of straight lines in relation to curved ones.

Division

Space

Thinking

In principle, any abstraction of the object is allowed which has a sufficiently strong creative power behind it.

Creative

Principles

Strong

Love in an animal sense is an illness, but a necessity which one has to overcome.

Animal

Illness

Overcoming

Often, very often, I am alone. My studio in Amsterdam, (Beckmann lived in the center of Amsterdam during World War 2.) an enormous old tobacco storeroom is again filled in my imagination with figures from the old days and from the new, like an ocean moved by storm and sun and always present in my thoughts. Then shapes become beings and seem comprehensible to me in the great void and uncertainty of the space which I call god.

Ocean

Space

War

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Achievement

Animal

Appetizers

Art

Believe

Bridges

Creative

Degradation

Deities

Dimensions

Division

Enough Already

Exhilaration

Feelings

Giving

Grief

Hate

I Hate

Ideas

Illness

Infinite

Invisible

Lasts

Law

Magic

Mean

Men

Moral

Mystery

Objectivity

Ocean

Order

Overcoming

Painting

Play

Principles

Problem

Real

Reality

Self

Shadow

Space

Spring

Strong

Summer

Sweet

Thinking

Two

Unique

Vision

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Quotes by Max Beckmann

Max Beckmann

Art is creative for the sake of realization, not for amusement… for transfiguration, not for the sake of play.

I am seeking for the bridge which leans from the visible to the invisible through reality.

I am working here (in Amsterdam) on my last big triptych, which will be a tremendous story, and which gives me a more intense life and exhilaration. My God, life is worth living!

I believe the reason I love painting so much is that it forces one to be objective.

I hardly need to abstract things, for each object is unreal enough already, so unreal that I can only make it real by means of painting.

I think only of objects: of a leg or an arm, of the wonderful sense of foreshortening, breaking through the plane, of the division of space, of the combination of straight lines in relation to curved ones.

In principle, any abstraction of the object is allowed which has a sufficiently strong creative power behind it.

Love in an animal sense is an illness, but a necessity which one has to overcome.

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Topics by Max Beckmann

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

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