I stayed a long time in this room [The room with paintings of Matisse, — Fauvism

"How do you see this tree? Is it really green? Use green, then, the most beautiful green on your palette. And that shadow, rather blue? Dont be afraid to paint it as blue as possible."

"What I am after, above all, is expression. Sometimes it has been conceded that I have a certain technical ability but that, my ambition being limited, I am unable to proceed beyond a purely visual satisfaction such as can be procured from the mere sight of a picture. But the purpose of a painter must not be conceived as separate from his pictorial means, and these pictorial means must be the more complete (I do not mean complicated) the deeper is his thought. I am unable to distinguish between the feeling I have for life and my way of expressing it."

"I try to condense the meaning of this body [of a woman] by drawing its essential lines. The charm will then become less apparent at first glance, but in the long run it will begin emanate from the new image. This image at the same time will be enriched by a wider meaning, a more comprehensively human one, while the charm, being less apparent, will not be its only characteristic. It will be merely one element in the general conception of the figure."

"We come to the most stupefying gallery in a Salon still teeming with shocks. Here any description, any account, any criticism, become equally impossible - since, apart from the materials employed, that which is shown to us bears no resemblance to painting; variations of color without form; blue, red, yellow, green; splotches of raw color juxtaposed any which way; the barbaric and naive games of a child playing with the paint box someone gave him for a Christmas present,"

"Lorsque jentendais crier devant Matisse: "cest de la folie!" javais envie de répliquer: "mais non, Monsieur, tout au contraire. Cest un produit de théories." Tout sy peut déduire, expliquer; lintuition ny a que faire. Sans doute quand M. Matisse peint le front de cette femme couleur pomme et ce tronc darbre rouge franc, il peut nous dire: "cest parce que..." Oui, raisonnable, cette peinture, et raisonneuse même."

"All sorts of works are to be seen at the Salon [dAutomne] this year [1905], some ingenious works, some lost in savage spices [the Fauvist paintings], a strange tableau of mixed good and bad offerings.. ..There is this group of curious colorists.. ..who have great promise, but who are lost in taking for their standard.. ..improvisation and incoherence, in refusing to condescend to.. ..order, design, application.. ..We had the dogma of the w:École des Beaux Arts,. ..they [The Fauves] have replaced it with that of anarchic."