Antoni Tàpies quotes - page 2

For in order to be born again, you must die. (Antoni Tàpies)
In actual fact, contemplation is not a form of inactivity but an exercise. View quote
Antoni Tàpies
And in this sense [of using 'poor' material / arte povare] I've been influenced by or related to some Dadaist forerunner, Duchamp, Schwitters... But there are other aspects of the 'ascetic' function, of the 'sacralisation' of the world around us which I've referred to.... the 'supreme identity' of Samsara with Nirvana. The use of new materials, collage and assemblage, became quite widespread among some new artists of that time. View quote
Antoni Tàpies
I would say off the cuff that I am an anxious person. I worry about everything. I need to know everything. I tend to live in a state of anxiety with the feeling that life is some kind of great catastrophe. I feel the desire, or rather the intense need, to do something useful for society, and that is what stimulates me. In every situation I always look for what is positive and beneficial for my fellow citizens. I am interested in study, reflection, philosophy - but always as a dilettante. I also consider myself a dilettante as a painter. View quote
Antoni Tàpies
The highest wisdom incarnated in the poorest body. And even in straw mixed with manure: the final substances in which, by a rare miracle, the origin and strength of life emerge anew. The circle closes. View quote
Antoni Tàpies
The most sensational surprise was the sudden discovery, one day, that my pictures, for the first time in history, had become walls. By means of what strange process had I arrived at such precise images? And why did they make me, their first viewer, quake with emotion? View quote
Antoni Tàpies
..[the walls in the city] witnessed the martyrdom and the inhumane repression inflicted on our people. View quote
Antoni Tàpies
..the wall, the window or the door - and so many other images that parade in my canvases - are indeed there and I am far from trying to hide the fact. With this I mean that I do not think that images, in my works, should be considered as indifferent excuses to prop visual elements, as the 'subject-matters' were said to be for Impressionists and Fauves. From those 'subject-matters', it is further said, the ensuing abstractionists or Informalists liberated themselves. My walls, windows or doors - or at least my suggestions of them - do not avoid their responsibility and hold their full archetypal or symbolic weight. View quote
Antoni Tàpies
Despite my fervour for many Surrealist painters, I was soon wary of the preeminence of those 'literary anecdotes' that made many works appear as 'genre clichés', not unlike nineteenth-century pastiches. They often ignored the visual possibilities of the painting medium. View quote
Antoni Tàpies
It is essential to bear in mind that the world of the mystics, like that of modern physics, cannot always be 'explained' in normal words, but often 'shows' itself the better through visual images.. [from the accumulation of matter and of objects to the radicalism of a gesture, it is a matter of] painting the essential and nothing more (Tàpies is citing here Llull) View quote
Antoni Tàpies
Take a look at the simplest of objects. Let's take, for example, an old chair. It seems like nothing. But think of the universe comprised within it: the sweaty hands cutting the wood that used to be a robust tree, full of energy, in the middle of a luxuriant forest by some high mountains. The loving work that built it, the joyful anticipation of the one who bought it, the tired bodies it has helped, the pains and the joys it must have endured, whether in fancy halls or in a humble dining room in your neighbourhood. Everything, everything shares life and has its importance! Even the most worn down of chair carries inside the initial force of the sap climbing from the earth, out there in the forest, and will still be useful the day when, broken into kindling, it burns in some fireplace. (Antoni Tàpies)
One day I attempted to reach silence directly, with greater resignation, surrendering to the fate that governs any profound struggle. My millions of furious clawings became millions of grains of dust, of sand.. .A new geo-graphy lit my way, carrying me from surprise to surprise: suggestions of unusual combinations and molecular structures, of atomic phenomena, of the world of galaxies or of images in a microscope. The symbolism of dust - 'to be one with dust, here lies the profound identity, that is, the inner profundity between man and nature' (Tao Te Ching) -, of ashes, of the earth from whence we come and to which we return, of the solidarity born when we realise that the differences among ourselves are like those between one grain of sand and the next.. View quote
Antoni Tàpies
..the equivalence of sounds, gratings, scratches, explosions, shots, blows, hammering, shouts, resonance, echoes in space; meditation of a cosmic theme, reflection for the contemplation of the earth, of magma, of lava, of ash; battlefield; garden; play-field; destiny of the ephemeral.. .Far from the cliché people have of artists holding the baggage of necessary originality, personality, style, etc., that calls for an outsider's discussion of the works, for the author there is, foremost, a nucleus of thought that is more anonymous and collective and of which artists are but humble servants. This is surely the zone where wisdom is deposited, the wisdom that one may really find beneath all ideologies and the contingencies of this world. It is the impulse of our life instinct for knowledge, love and freedom that has been kept and fed by the wisdom of all time. View quote
Antoni Tàpies
Towards the end of 1958, I greatly increased.. ..the works done with what is called poor material. I felt the need to persist and go deeper with the entire message of what is insignificant, worn or dramatised by time.. .In fact, it was the most conscious resumption of subjects that had often attracted me. In my research, I had discovered this material, one I find loaded with strange suggestions, which is cardboard. A grey, anonymous material that won't be easily manipulated, for which very reason the slightest mark of the hand torments it and destroys it. But the piece of cardboard, the box, the lid, the tray.. ..dirty clothes (socks, T-shirt, underpants...), old furniture, everyday objects; not used as a representation or theme in the picture but as real bodies, objects. View quote
Antoni Tàpies
If I can't change the world, at least I want to change the way people look at it. View quote
Antoni Tàpies