Howard Hodgkin Quotes, Sayings, Remarks, Thoughts and Speeches
Howard Hodgkin Quotes and Sayings
- 1
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.
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- 2
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 3
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 4
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 5
I am isolated as an artist, not as a person.
Howard Hodgkin | Refcard PDF ↑
- 6
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.
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- 7
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 8
I don't think you can lightly paint a picture. It's an activity I take very seriously.
Howard Hodgkin | Refcard PDF ↑
- 9
I fell through a crack for years. Historically, I am a nothing because I fit in no category. I can only be me.
Howard Hodgkin | Refcard PDF ↑
- 10
I find old copies of National Gallery catalogues, which are written in the dryest possible prose, infinitely soothing.
Howard Hodgkin | Refcard PDF ↑
- 11
I hate painting.
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- 12
I look at my pictures, and I think, 'Well, how did I do that?'
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- 13
I once was interviewed and got so exasperated that I said, 'What do you want, a shopping list?' They kept asking, 'What's in this picture?'
Howard Hodgkin | Refcard PDF ↑
- 14
I think that words are often extraneous to what I do.
Howard Hodgkin | Refcard PDF ↑
- 15
I think words come between the spectator and the picture.
Howard Hodgkin | Refcard PDF ↑
- 16
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 17
I'm very envious of the few artists who are any good and still do portraits.
Howard Hodgkin | Refcard PDF ↑
- 18
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 19
In England, it's thought to be morally suspect to worry about what your surroundings look like.
Howard Hodgkin | Refcard PDF ↑
- 20
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 21
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 22
My friends tend to be writers. I think writers and painters are really all the same-we just sit in our rooms.
Howard Hodgkin | Refcard PDF ↑
- 23
My language is what I use, and if I lost that, I wouldn't be able to say anything.
Howard Hodgkin | Refcard PDF ↑
- 24
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 | Refcard PDF ↑
- 25
When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else.
Howard Hodgkin | Refcard PDF ↑
- 26
You keep on balancing and balancing and balancing until the picture wins, because then the subject's turned into the picture.
Howard Hodgkin | Refcard PDF ↑
