71 Quotes by Willem De Kooning

I read somewhere that Rubens said students should not draw from life, but draw from all the great classic casts. Then you really get the measure of them, you really know what to do. And then, put in your own dimples. Isn't that marvelous!

Content is a glimpse of something, an encounter like a flash. It's very tiny - very tiny. Content.

Yes, I am influenced by everbody. But every time I put my hands in my pockets I find someone else's fingers there.

Art never seems to make me peaceful or pure. I always seem to be wrapped in the melodrama of vulgarity. I do not think... of art as a situation of comfort.

Watercolors is the first and the last thing an artist does.

The idea of space is given to the artist to change if he can. The subject matter in the abstract is space.

If I stretch my arms and wonder where my fingers are - that is all the space I need as a painter.

The texture of experience is prior to everything else.

Once, after finishing a picture, I thought I would stop for awhile, take a trip, do things-the next time I thought of this, I found five years had gone by.