Balthus Quotations

I refuse to confide and don't like it when people write about art.

One must always draw, draw with the eyes, when one cannot draw with a pencil.

Painting is a source of endless pleasure, but also of great anguish.

Painting is the passage from the chaos of the emotions to the order of the possible.

Painting what I experience, translating what I feel, is like a great liberation. But it is also work, self-examination, consciousness, criticism, struggle.

I always feel the desire to look for the extraordinary in ordinary things; to suggest, not to impose, to leave always a slight touch of mystery in my paintings.

Painting is a language which cannot be replaced by another language. I don't know what to say about what I paint, really.

I will always find even the worst paintings that attempt some kind of representation better than the best invented paintings.

The best way to begin is to say: Balthus is a painter of whom nothing is known. And now let us have a look at his paintings.

The craft of painting has virtually disappeared. There is hardly anyone left who really possesses it. For evidence one has only to look at the painters of this century.

I had only planned to strike the gong violently in order to somehow shake people up and make them more aware. I think I succeeded.

Painting what I experience, translating what I feel, is a great liberation. But it is also work, self-examination, consciousness, criticism, struggle...

If you speak of beauty, you are at once suspected of...kitsch.