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Robert Henri - From the Activity category:
The object, which is back of every true work of art, is the attainment of a state of being, a state of high functioning, a more than ordinary moment of existence. In such moments activity is inevitable, and whether this activity is with brush, pen, chisel, or tongue, its result is but a by-product of the state, a trace, the footprint of the state. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Appreciation category:
Art appreciation, like love, cannot be done by proxy. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Art category:
Art is an outsider, a gypsy over the face of the earth. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Art category:
A work of art is the trace of a magnificent struggle. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Art category:
Art is, after all, only a trace – like a footprint which shows that one has walked bravely and in great happiness. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Artists category:
When the artist is alive in any person... he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and he opens ways for better understanding. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Artists category:
An artist's job is to surprise himself. Use all means possible. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Artists category:
The real artist's work is a surprise to himself. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Beginning category:
In search for the perfect beginning. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Brother/Sisterhood category:
Through art, mysterious bonds of understanding and of knowledge are established among men. They are the bonds of a great Brotherhood. Those who are of the Brotherhood know each other, and time and space cannot separate them. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Collectors category:
The man who has honesty, integrity, the love of inquiry, the desire to see beyond, is ready to appreciate good art. He needs no one to give him an 'Art Education'; he is already qualified. He needs but to see pictures with his active mind, look into them for the things that belong to him, and he will find soon enough in himself an art connoisseur and an art lover of the first order. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Colour category:
Color is only beautiful when it means something. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Composition category:
Good composition is like a suspension bridge; each line adds strength and takes none away... Making lines run into each other is not composition. There must be motive for the connection. Get the art of controlling the observer – that is composition. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Concentration category:
Concentrate on a single feature – as, build all toward one eye – make all lines lead toward that eye. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Contemplation category:
There is no art without contemplation. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Contrasts category:
A Curve does not exist in its full power until contrasted with a straight line. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Creativity category:
The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Discovery category:
We make our discoveries while in the state [of high functioning] because then we are clear-sighted. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Drawing category:
Realize that a drawing is not a copy. It is a construction in very different materials. A drawing is an invention. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Drawing category:
Drawing is not following a line on the model, it is drawing your sense of the thing. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Drawing category:
The sketch hunter moves through life as he finds it, not passing negligently the things he loves, but stopping to know them, and to note them down in the shorthand of his sketchbook. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Drawing category:
Keep a bad drawing until by study you have found out why it is bad. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Drawing category:
A drawing should be a verdict on the model. Don't confuse a drawing with a map. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Drunkenness category:
The artist should be intoxicated with the idea of the thing he wants to express. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Education category:
A common defect of modern art study is that too many students do not know why they draw. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Education category:
Students work in schools making life studies for years, win prizes for life studies and find in the end that they know practically nothing of the human figure. They have acquired the ability to copy. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Education category:
All education must be self-education. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Education category:
Self-education only produces expressions of self. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Effort category:
Do whatever you do intensely. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Emotion category:
You will never draw the sense of a thing unless you are feeling it at the time you work. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Expectation category:
Manet did not do the expected. He was a pioneer. He followed his individual whim. Told the public what he wanted it to know, not the time worn things the public already knew and thought it wanted to hear again. The public was very much offended. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Expression category:
A picture should be the expression of the will of the painter. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Expression category:
Each man must take the material that he finds at hand, see that in it there are the big truths of life, the fundamentally big forces, and then express in his art whatever is the cause of his pleasure. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Fashion category:
The world will see many fashions of art and most of the world will follow the fashions and make none. These cults - these 'movements' - are absolutely necessary, or at any rate their causes are, for somewhere in their centres are the ones who bear the Idea, the ones who have questioned, 'But what do I think?' and 'How shall I say it best?' (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Form category:
There are forms that can only be seen when you are near a painting, others only appear when you are far away. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Generosity category:
Art is the giving by each man of his evidence to the world. Those who wish to give, love to give, discover the pleasure of giving. Those who give are tremendously strong. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Genius category:
Genius is not a possession of the limited few, but exists in some degree in everyone. Where there is natural growth, a full and free play of faculties, genius will manifest itself. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Habit category:
If a certain activity, such as painting, becomes the habitual mode of expression, it may follow that taking up the painting materials and beginning work with them will act suggestively and so presently evoke a flight into the higher state. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Happiness category:
It takes wit, interest and energy to be happy. The pursuit of happiness is a great activity. One must be open and alive. It is the greatest feat man has to accomplish, and spirits must flow. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Humanity category:
Because we are saturated with life, because we are human, our strongest motive is life, humanity; and the stronger the motive back of the line the stronger, and therefore more beautiful, the line will be. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Ideas category:
The artist should have a powerful will. He should be powerfully possessed by one idea. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Imagination category:
An artist who has no imagination is a mechanic. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Importance category:
I am interested in the size of your intention. It is better to overstate the important than to understate it. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Joy category:
Pretend you are dancing or singing a picture. A worker or painter should enjoy his work, else the observer will not enjoy it. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Joy category:
All real works of art look as though they were done in joy. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Knowledge category:
Self-acquaintance is a rare condition. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Knowledge category:
Knowledge of anatomy is a tool like good brushes. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Language category:
Know what the old masters did. Know how they composed their pictures, but do not fall into the conventions they established. These conventions were right for them, and they are wonderful. They made their language. You make yours. All the past can help you. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Life category:
Life is finding yourself. It is a spirit development. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Life category:
I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Life category:
Today must not be a souvenir of yesterday, and so the struggle is everlasting. Who am I today? What do I see today? How shall I use what I know, and how shall I avoid being victim of what I know? Life is not repetition. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Lines category:
Get the few main lines and see what lines they call out. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Lines category:
Lines are results, do not draw them for themselves. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Lines category:
Count on big lines to express your ideas. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Love category:
There are pictures that manifest education and there are pictures that manifest love. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Love category:
Renoir had not only a great interest in human character, in human feeling, but had also a great love for the people he painted. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Masters category:
It's a wrong idea that a master is a finished person. Masters are very faulty; they haven't learned everything and they know it. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Memory category:
Develop your visual memory. Draw everything you have drawn from the model from memory as well. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Memory category:
If you work from memory, you are most likely to put in your real feeling. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Memory category:
The most vital things in the look of a landscape endure only for a moment. Work should be done from memory; memory of that vital moment. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Memory category:
-quoted in John Pellew Paints Watercolors...
The good thing about painting from memory is that so much is forgotten. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Methodology category:
A tree growing out of the ground is as wonderful today as it ever was. It does not need to adopt new and startling methods. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Models category:
The model is not to be copied, but to be realized. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Models category:
Has your drawing the meaning you saw in the model at first? (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Movement category:
Things should all be moving toward the expression of a great idea. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Nature category:
There has never been a painting that was more beautiful than nature. The model does not unfold herself to you, you must rise to her. She should be the inspiration for your painting. No man has ever over-appreciated a human being. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Nudes category:
There is nothing in all the world more beautiful or significant of the laws of the universe than the nude human body. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Nudes category:
When we respect the nude, we will no longer have any shame about it. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Order category:
Art tends toward balance, order, judgment of relative values, the laws of growth, the economy of living – very good things for anyone to be interested in. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Originality category:
Don't worry about your originality. You couldn't get rid of it even if you wanted to. It will stick with you and show up for better or worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Painting category:
Paint like a fiend when the idea possesses you. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Painting category:
To point is to know how to put nothing on the canvas, and have it look like something when you stand back. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Perspective category:
A mountain seen in the haze of distance must nevertheless look a solid heavy mountain. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Possessions category:
All the past up to a moment ago is your legacy. You have a right to it. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Power category:
Why do we love the sea? It is because it has some potent power to make us think things we like to think. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Procrastination category:
If you do not act on a suggestion at first, you grow dull to its message. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Progress category:
Your painting is the marking of your progression into nature, a sensation of something you see way beyond the two pretty colors over there. Don't stop to paint the material, but push on to give the spirit. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Purpose category:
I paint for the sole purpose of magnifying the privilege of being alive. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Reality category:
Reality is obtained not by imitation, but by producing the sense of nature. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Revelation category:
Strokes carry a message whether you will it or not. The stroke is just like the artist at the time he makes it. All the certainties, all the uncertainties, all the bigness of his spirit and the littlenesses are in it. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Rewards category:
The pernicious influence of the prize and medal giving in art is so great that it should be stopped. History proves that juries in art have been generally wrong. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Rewards category:
The reason for the survival of the award system is purely commercial. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Rewards category:
The only sensible way to regard the art life is that it is a privilege you are willing to pay for... You may cite honors and attentions and even money paid, but I would have you note that these were paid a long time after the creator had gone through his struggles. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Searching category:
Look for echoes. Sometimes the same shape or direction will echo through the picture. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Senses category:
Each sensation is precious, protect it, cherish it, keep it. Never give it away. You must develop that balance which allows all of the world to come in to you, and only that which you have expressed in your art to move back out again into the world. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Simplicity category:
If the artist's will is not strong he will see all kinds of unessential things. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Spirituality category:
In a tree there is a spirit of life, a spirit of growth and a spirit of holding its head up. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Spirituality category:
Don't stop to paint the material, but push on to give the spirit. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Struggle category:
Fight with yourself when you paint, not with the model. A student is one who struggles with himself for order. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Style category:
Your style is the way you talk in paint. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Teaching category:
By my teaching I hope to inspire you to personal activity and to present your vision. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Thinking category:
If you think of a school drawing while you work, your drawing will look like one. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Thinking category:
There are mighty few people who think what they think they think. (Robert Henri)
Robert Henri - From the Wonder category:
What we need is more sense of the wonder of life, and less of the business of making a picture. (Robert Henri)
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