"The artist should know what, and why, things happen in his pictures. Formerly he lived by some kind of mood. He awaited the rising of the moon, twilight, put green shades on his lamps, and this all attuned his mood like a violin. But when asked why his face was crooked, or green, he could not give an exact answer. 'I want it so, i like it like that...' In the end this desire was ascribed to intuitive will. Consequently the intuitive feeling did not speak clearly. And in that case, its condition was not only subconscious, but totally unconscious".

- Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935)

Source: Malevich, Kasimir. From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Realism in Painting. Translation by T.Anderson (ed.), K.S. Malevich: Essays on Art 1915-1933, vol. 1, Copenhagen, 1969, pp. 19-21, 23-5, 26-36 and 38-41. Printed in: Harrison & Wood (ed). Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, pp173-183.

"Academic realists - they are the last descendants of the svage. It is they who go about in the worn-out robes of the past"

- Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935)

Source: Malevich, Kasimir. From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Realism in Painting. Translation by T.Anderson (ed.), K.S. Malevich: Essays on Art 1915-1933, vol. 1, Copenhagen, 1969, pp. 19-21, 23-5, 26-36 and 38-41. Printed in: Harrison & Wood (ed). Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, pp173-183.

"The transferring of real objects onto canvas is the art of skilful reproduction, and only that. And between the art of creating and the art of copying there is a great difference. The artist can be a creator only when the forms in his picture have nothing in common with nature. For art is the ability to construct, not on the interrelation of form and colour, and not on an aesthetic basis of beauty in composition, but on the basis of weight, speed and the direction of movement"

- Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935)

Source: Malevich, Kasimir. From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Realism in Painting. Translation by T.Anderson (ed.), K.S. Malevich: Essays on Art 1915-1933, vol. 1, Copenhagen, 1969, pp. 19-21, 23-5, 26-36 and 38-41. Printed in: Harrison & Wood (ed). Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, pp173-183.

"Painting is simply in no position to present an object for simultaneous collective experience"

- Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)

Source: Benjamin, Walter. Printed in: Harrison & Wood. Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Originally published in the Frankfurt Institute journal (operating in exile in the United States), Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, V, no. 1, New York, 1936. English translation by Harry Zohn in H. Arendt (ed), Walter benjamin, illuminations, London, 1973, pp. 219-53.

"How does the cameraman compare with the painter? To answer this we take recourse to an analogy with surgical operation. The surgeon represents the polar opposite of the magician. The magician heals a sick person by the laying on of hands; the surgeon cuts into the patients body. The magician maintains the natural distance between the patient and himself; though he reduced it very slightly by the laying on of hands, he greatly increases it by virtue of his authority. The surgeon does exactly the reverse; he greatly diminishes the distance between himself and the patient by penetrating into the patient's body, and increases it but little by the caution with which his hand moves among the organs. In short, in contrast to the magician - who is still hidden in the medical practitioner - the surgeon at the decisive moment abstains from facing the patient man to man; rather it is through the operation that he penetrates into him. Magician and surgeon compare to painter and cameraman. The painter maintains in his work a natural distance from reality, the cameraman penetrated deeply into its web. There is a tremendous difference between the pictures they obtain. That of the painter is a total one, that of the cameraman consists of multiple fragments which are assembled under a new law. Thus, for contemporary man the representation of reality by the film is incomparably more significant than that of the painter, since it offers, precisely because of the thouroughgoing permeation of reality with mechanical equipment, an aspect of reality which is free of all equipment. And that is what one is entitled to ask from a work of art."

- Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)

Source: Benjamin, Walter. Printed in: Harrison & Wood. Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Originally published in the Frankfurt Institute journal (operating in exile in the United States), Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, V, no. 1, New York, 1936. English translation by Harry Zohn in H. Arendt (ed), Walter benjamin, illuminations, London, 1973, pp. 219-53.

"Det å male et ansikt er således ikke noe man bør gjøre - hvis man nå har forstå meg rett - med det vulgære og tarvelige mål for øye å etterligne den naturlige skjønnhet og rivalisere med ungdommen. Man har for øvrig bemerket at hesligheten slett ikke blir forskjønnet gjennom kunstgrep; de kan bare tjene skjønnheten. Hvem ville våge å tilkjenne kunsten den åndsfattige funksjon å skulle etterlikne naturen? Sminkekunsten behøver ikke å skjule seg eller prøve å gjøre seg usynlig; den bør tvert imot stilles til skue, om ikke med skapaktighet så i hvert fall med en slags oppriktighet"

- Charles Baudelaire

Source: Baudelaire, Charles. Fra Kunsten og det moderne liv (1863). Translation to Norwegian by Arne Kjell Haugen. I Bale og Bø-Rygg. 2008, s. 167-172. Quoted in Bale, Kjersti. 2009. Estetikk: En Innføring. Oslo: Pax Forlag. s. 56.

"Painting is so poetic, while sculpture is more logical and scientific and makes you worry about gravity."
- Damien Hirst

"Colour is the essence of painting, which the subject always killed."

- Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935)