Howard Hodgkin Quotes
"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
(Related: Saying)
"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
(Related: Work, Artist, Criticism)
"In England, it's thought to be morally suspect to worry about what your surroundings look like."
- Howard Hodgkin
(Related: Thought, England, Worry)
"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
(Related: Art, School, states, United, World)
"I'm very envious of the few artists who are any good and still do portraits."
- Howard Hodgkin
(Related: Artists, Portraits)
"My friends tend to be writers. I think writers and painters are really all the same-we just sit in our rooms."
- Howard Hodgkin
(Related: Friends, Writers)
"My language is what I use, and if I lost that, I wouldn't be able to say anything."
- Howard Hodgkin
(Related: Language)
"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
"You keep on balancing and balancing and balancing until the picture wins, because then the subject's turned into the picture."
- Howard Hodgkin
"I think words come between the spectator and the picture."
- Howard Hodgkin
(Related: Words)
"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
(Related: Nature, Being, Extravagance, Reason)
"When I finish a painting, it usually looks as surprising to me as to anyone else."
- Howard Hodgkin
(Related: Painting)
"I think that words are often extraneous to what I do."
- Howard Hodgkin
(Related: Words)
"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
(Related: Want)
"I look at my pictures, and I think, 'Well, how did I do that?'"
- Howard Hodgkin
"I hate painting."
- Howard Hodgkin
(Related: Hate, Painting)
"I find old copies of National Gallery catalogues, which are written in the dryest possible prose, infinitely soothing."
- Howard Hodgkin
(Related: Old, Prose)
"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
(Related: Nothing, Years)
"I don't think you can lightly paint a picture. It's an activity I take very seriously."
- 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
(Related: Art, Work)
"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
(Related: Work, Artists)
"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
(Related: People, Talk)
"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
(Related: Painting)
"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
(Related: Artists, Energy, Illness)
"I am isolated as an artist, not as a person."
- Howard Hodgkin
(Related: Artist)