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