Bram van Velde

“Of course painting is ridiculous. But it’s the only way I've got to get closer to life.”

“Oh Baudelaire.. .He used to be enormously important to me. It's thanks to him that I was able to get through the war [in Paris, during 1940 – 1945 Van Velde had a long and painful break, with only a few paintings he finished]. A true loyal mind without hypocrisy. The most universal spirit. The greatest Frenchman. I have always been much less interested in painters [than Baudelaire - a great surprise to hear for Charles Juliet the interviewer].”

“Life is wrecked by living.”

“The artist is the bearer of life.”

“Through painting I try to get closer to nothingness, to the void.”

“Each time it’s an attempt to get there. To get to see. To get where you can see.”

“Life is so difficult to catch.”

“When you cross any border there is always an uneasy moment when you feel yourself automatically an enemy. Artists don’t belong to any group or country.. .When you are living the truth, the world no longer exists, events become unimportant. But the way of truth is not easy.. ..if you are on the side of truth, you have no power. That’s why you are always defeated. The power, all the power, is on the side of the world.. .I have been completely absorbed in my adventure. No country, no family, no ties. I didn’t exist anymore. I just had to press on.”

“I can't say or explain anything. Pictures don’t come from your head but from life.. .I am always looking for life. All that escapes thought or will-power.”

“The artist is living a secret that he has to make manifest”

“In this world that destroys me, the only thing that I can do is to live my weakness. That weakness is my only strength.”

“I paint the impossibility of painting.”

“I'm trying to see, when everything in this world conspires to prevent us from seeing.”

“Mondrian? His mind was too subtle. He worked in the light. I work in the darkness.. .Mondrian is the Buddha of painting. I saw him once. You wondered how a man could radiate such charisma.”

“Painting is an aid to vision. It turns life, the complexity of life, into something visible. It reveals things that we don’t know how to see.”

“Painting is being alive. Through my painting, I beat back this world that stops us living and where we are in constant danger of being destroyed.. .No, you have to know when to keep silent.”

“Yes, I abandoned everything. Painting required it. It was all or nothing.”

“They make you and you have no say in it. It’s Godot all the time. A chain around your neck and the whip cracking behind you.”

“To be true, you have to take the plunge, to touch bottom. But most people want to be in control. They fear the worst. You can’t control anything. What you have to do is let yourself be taken over.. .All the paintings I have made, I was compelled to make. You must never force yourself.”

“In the first piece that you Beckett wrote about me [circa 1946], you never once used the word color. That was important. I was struck by it.”