Talk:Pablo Picasso

Disputed quotes
Everything you can imagine is real

Great quote, always attributed to Picasso. But where is it from? --Siorale 15:00, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * First hit I can find is from "Control applications and ergonomics in agriculture" (1998) Grover cleveland (talk) 23:46, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

For a long time I limited myself to one color — as a form of discipline.

Art Critics and Artists
Endlessly attributed to Picasso:


 * "When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine."

I had read of it as sourced to an interview conducted late in Picasso's life. Can anyone reading here fine that down to tell us which interview, if so?

Learning by Doing
This quote pops up all over the web:


 * I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.

It is almost invariably attributed to Picasso but one site attributes an extremely minor variation to van Gogh. I have seen no source for it. Rather than add ignorance, I'd rather gain knowledge. Editors in WQ should be sourcing quotes regularly; I'd like to see if this can be sourced -- or not.

Xiong 02:19, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Xiong, the source is actually listed on Wikipedia itself: The Potato Eaters. Van Gogh in a letter to Anthon van Rappard September 1885: "I am always doing what I can't do yet in order to learn how to do it". Picasso would have been four years old at the time. Should we perhaps be making note of this on the Picasso page? I'm not sure it should be attributed to Picasso at all. Davidkturner (talk)


 * It's nice to have a note on "misattributed quotes" section; there are quotes frequently attributed to a wrong person, and having such a note on these quotes would avoid future mistakes. --Aphaia (talk) 19:09, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let528/letter.html "But I keep on making what I can’t do yet in order to learn to be able to do it."

I've just removed this quotation from the main article. The source that was given, Richard Alan Krieger's "Civilizations Quotations: Life's Ideal" is not a legitimate source -- it's no different that a quote farm of unvalidated sources except it got published. Van Gogh certainly is more likely. And Aristotle said something similar in the Nichomachean Ethics Book II.1: "For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them." But I can track down no credible source that Picasso said this.


 * I saw your edit, and have placed the quote into a "Misattributed" section. This is preferable to removing the quote entirely, as it permits people to learn more about the Vincent Van Gogh source, and prevents it from being re-added as a Picasso quote. ~ ♞☤☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 02:10, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia transwiki
Sceptre (Will) transwikied material from Quotations by Pablo Picasso (now deleted) to Wikiquote, which was then merged into this article by Ubiquity. The edit history of the originating Wikipedia article was:


 * (cur) (last) 21:53, 26 January 2008 (UTC) Noahcs (Talk | contribs) (1,893 bytes) (Suggested move to wikiquote) (rollback | undo)
 * (cur) (last) 20:09, 30 January 2007 (UTC) P.B. Pilhet (Talk | contribs) m (Reverted 1 edit by 82.1.171.251 (talk) to last revision (22569520) by Sean Black using VP) (undo)
 * (cur) (last) 20:07, 30 January 2007 (UTC) 82.1.171.251 (Talk) (→Quotations by Pablo Picasso) (undo)
 * (cur) (last) 20:46, 4 September 2005 (UTC) Kyorosuke (Talk | contribs) m (Pablo Picasso/Quotations moved to Quotations by Pablo Picasso) (undo)
 * (cur) (last) 01:07, 31 August 2005 (UTC) Cfitzart (Talk | contribs) (undo)
 * (cur) (last) 19:01, 12 August 2005 (UTC) Dstopping (Talk | contribs)

— Jeff Q (talk) 03:26, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

Unsourced
Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable, precise and verifiable source for any quote on this list please move it to Pablo Picasso. --Antiquary 09:37, 3 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Cuando me dicen que soy demasiado viejo para hacer una cosa, procuro hacerla enseguida.
 * When they tell me I'm too old to do something, I attempt it immediately.


 * El arte es una mentira que nos acerca a la verdad.
 * Art is a lie that leads us closer to the truth.
 * This link contains a mention of a source for the above quote. The source is still unverified however, and no archived version seems to exist online. --50.46.148.155 05:47, 16 May 2011 (UTC)


 * El camino de la juventud lleva toda una vida.
 * The path of youth takes a whole life.


 * Genio es personalidad con dos duros de talento.
 * Genius is personality with two pennies of talent.


 * Hace falta mucho, mucho tiempo para ser joven.
 * A long, long time is needed to be young.


 * La calidad de un pintor depende de la cantidad de pasado que lleve consigo.
 * The quality of a painter depends on the amount of the past he carries with him.


 * La pintura es más fuerte que yo, siempre consigue que haga lo que ella quiere.
 * The painting is stronger than me, it always gets me to do what it wants.


 * Me gusta vivir pobre... pero con mucho dinero.
 * I like to live poor... but with a lot of money.


 * Si se sabe exactamente lo que se va a hacer, ¿para qué hacerlo?.
 * If it is known exactly what is going to be done, why do it?


 * Si hubiera una sola verdad, no se podrían hacer cien lienzos sobre un mismo tema.
 * If there were only one truth, it wouldn't be possible to do 100 variations on the same theme.


 * Un pintor es un hombre que pinta lo que vende. Un artista, en cambio, es un hombre que vende lo que pinta.
 * A painter is a man who paints what he sells. An artist, however, is a man who sells what he paints.


 * Yo no digo todo, mas pinto todo.
 * I do not say everything, but I paint everything.


 * Yo no evoluciono, yo soy.
 * I do not evolve, I am.


 * Yo no pinto las cosas como las veo, yo pinto como las pienso.
 * I do not paint things as I see them, I paint how I think of them.


 * Yo no trabajo según la Naturaleza, sino delante de ella, con ella. Un pintor debe observar la Naturaleza, pero jamás confundirla con la pintura.
 * I don't work according to Nature, but in front and together with it. An artist must observe Nature, but never confuse it with the painting.


 * If they took away my paints I’d use pastels. If they took away my pastels I’d use crayons. If they took away my crayons I’d use pencils. If they stripped me naked and threw me in prison I’d spit on my finger and paint on the walls.
 * I've added what I presume is the original of this to the main page, with a source. It has been considerably expanded from the original. Grover cleveland (talk) 20:34, 3 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Ah, good taste -- what a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.


 * All I ever made was made for the present and in the hope it will always remain in the present.


 * Drink to me. Drink to my health. You know I can't drink any more.
 * Reported last words


 * God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things.


 * Good art bristles with razor blades.


 * I have discovered photography. Now I can kill myself. I have nothing else to learn.


 * It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.


 * North Pole, South Pole.
 * Referring to himself and his friend Henri Matisse


 * Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.


 * The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world.


 * Theories are lies that help us to see the truth.


 * There are two kinds of women — goddesses and doormats.


 * The three most astonishing things in the past half-century were The Blues, Cubism and...Polish Vodka.


 * Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don’t start measuring her limbs.


 * Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art.


 * If there is something to steal, I steal it!.


 * People want to find a "meaning" in everything and everyone. That's the disease of our age, an age that is anything but practical but believes itself to be more practical than any other age.


 * Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.

compare to "Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life" by Berthold Auerbach. "Berthold Auerbach Quotes." Quotes.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2014. Web. 29 May 2014. .
 * Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.


 * Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.


 * Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.


 * Nature does many things the way I do, but she hides them!


 * I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else.


 * There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.


 * Give me a museum and I'll fill it.


 * Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist.


 * The meaning of life is to find you gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.


 * Painting isn't an aesthetic operation; it's a form of magic designed as mediator between this strange hostile world and us.
 * Quoted in Mario Livio, The Golden Ratio (2002), p. 159

New Quote
I thought this was pretty good:

"The chief enemy of creativity is good taste."

Could that be added to the article? I don't have a reliable source, but I'm sure someone else could find it online that he really said that, or something along the lines of it.

If there were only one truth, you couldn’t paint a hundred canvases on the same theme.
Is this quote really from Picasso? 80.71.142.166 05:01, 22 December 2021 (UTC)