Lucian
Lucian
Lucian of Samosatawas a rhetorician and satirist who wrote in the Greek language during the Second Sophistic. He is noted for his witty and scoffing nature. Although he wrote solely in Greek, mainly Attic Greek, he was ethnically Assyrian. Lucian claimed to be a native speaker of a "barbarian tongue"which was most likely Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic...
real views feelings
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.
artist giving feelings
It is through observation and perception of atmosphere that he [the artist] can register the feeling that he wishes his painting to give out.
thinking half painting
I think half the point of painting a picture is that you don't know what will happen ... that if painters did know what was going to happen they wouldn't bother to do it.
art spring promise
A moment of complete happiness never occurs in the creation of a work of art. The promise of it is felt in the act of creation but disappears towards the completion of the work. For it is then the painter realises that it is only a picture he is painting. Until then he had almost dared to hope the picture might spring to life.
thinking use being-there
A painter must think of everything he sees as being there entirely for his own use and pleasure.
art character thinking
The character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art. Eliot said that art is the escape from personality, which I think is right. We know that Velázquez embezzled money from the Spanish court and wanted power and so on, but you can't see this in his art.
people care rooms
I work from the people that interest me, and that I care about, in rooms that I live in and know. I use the people to invent my pictures, and I can work more freely when they are there.
art would-be use
I am only interested in painting the actual person, in doing a painting of them, not in using them to some ulterior end of art. For me, to use someone doing something not native to them would be wrong.
lying would-be bits
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.
I never think about my style but just try and make the pictures look believable.
art littles rooms
I always felt that my work hadn't much to do with art; my admirations for other art had very little room to show themselves in my work because I hoped that if I concentrated enough the intensity of scrutiny alone would force life into the pictures. I ignored the fact that art, after all, derives from art. Now I realize that this is the case.
people paint spite
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.
art character artist
The character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art
art giving trying
I remember Francis Bacon would say that he felt he was giving art what he thought it previously lacked. With me, it's what Yeats called the fascination with what's difficult. I'm only trying to do what I can't do.