Howard Hodgkin quotes

When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else. (Howard Hodgkin)

You keep on balancing and balancing and balancing until the picture wins, because then the subject's turned into the picture.

Howard Hodgkin

I am happy for people to talk about my pictures, but I wish devoutly that I was not expected to talk about them myself.

Howard Hodgkin

It takes a long time for the gleam in the eye to turn into something solid.

Howard Hodgkin

I never think that anything I do is courageous.

Howard Hodgkin

Collecting has been my great extravagance. It's a way of being. I collect for the same reason that I eat too much-I'm one of nature's shoppers.

Howard Hodgkin

I want my pictures to be things. I want them to be made up of marks that are physically and individually self-sufficient.

Howard Hodgkin

I am isolated as an artist, not as a person.

Howard Hodgkin

I think words come between the spectator and the picture.

Howard Hodgkin

A painting is finished when the subject comes back, when what has caused the painting to be made comes back as an object.

Howard Hodgkin

I don't look at the work of my contemporaries very much; I tend to look at pictures by dead artists. It's much easier to get near their paintings. (Howard Hodgkin)

I find old copies of National Gallery catalogues, which are written in the dryest possible prose, infinitely soothing.

Howard Hodgkin

The picture surface recedes just as much in the 20th century as it did in the 15th. The techniques of making pictures have hardly changed.

Howard Hodgkin

My friends tend to be writers. I think writers and painters are really all the same-we just sit in our rooms.

Howard Hodgkin

A collection makes its own demands. Many artists have been collectors. I think of it rather as an illness. I felt it was using up too much energy.

Howard Hodgkin

In the United States there has been a kind of a structure in the Modern art world. The New York School was nearly a coherent thing-for a minute.

Howard Hodgkin

In England, it's thought to be morally suspect to worry about what your surroundings look like.

Howard Hodgkin

I think that words are often extraneous to what I do.

Howard Hodgkin

My language is what I use, and if I lost that, I wouldn't be able to say anything.

Howard Hodgkin

I don't really have a historical overview of my work at all. I'm not an art historian. I don't see that there's this period and that period.

Howard Hodgkin

Matisse was very clear about saying that you have to blow your own trumpet and explain yourself, which I think has been slightly forgotten. (Howard Hodgkin)

I'm very envious of the few artists who are any good and still do portraits.

Howard Hodgkin

I don't think you can lightly paint a picture. It's an activity I take very seriously.

Howard Hodgkin

I'm vulnerable to criticism. Any artist is, because you work alone in your studio and, until recently, critics were the only way you'd get any feedback.

Howard Hodgkin

I look at my pictures, and I think, 'Well, how did I do that?'

Howard Hodgkin

Previous
1 (Current)
2
Next

Howard Hodgkin

Howard Hodgkin - Image

Photo: dm4244, CC BY-SA 4.0

Occupation: British Artist
Born: August 6, 1932
Died: March 9, 2017
Quotes count: 28
Wikipedia: Howard Hodgkin

Related authors

Frank Auerbach 7

German Artist

David Hockney 122

English Painter

Anthony Caro 3

English Sculptor

Bridget Riley 13

British Artist

Nicholas Serota 13

British Curator

Susan Sontag 258

American Writer

Barbara Hepworth 48

English Artist

Edgar Degas 71

French Artist

Tracey Emin 38

English Sculptor

Julian Barnes 104

English Writer