The journal
A curated selection from the Moniqs archive, newest first. More stories are being moved over from the original site.
Reflections · Reflection
“I may honestly say that I have never consciously placed an idle touch upon canvas…” John Everett Millais (1829 – 1896) Ophelia, 1851-1852 Portrait of a Girl (Sophie Gray), 1857
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Literature · Reflection
“The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!” ― Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton (1862-1937)was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Liter
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Reflections · Reflection
“What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show
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Reflections · Reflection
“…for whether we want to or not, we belong to our time and we share in its opinions, its feelings, even its delusions.” ― Henri Matisse Henri Matisse at work on his Cut-Outs at his home in Nice, 1953 Photo Paris Match via Getty Image Henri Matisse, The Reader, Marguerite Matisse
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Art · Reflection
“If you take photographs, don’t speak, don’t write, don’t analyse yourself, and don’t answer any questions.” Robert Doisneau Robert Doisneau, 1950
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Reflections · Reflection
“To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty, yes pretty! There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them.” Pierre-Auguste Renoir Camille Monet and her son Jean in the Garden at Argenteuil, 1874. Pierre August
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Reflections · Reflection
“Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not…” Francis Bacon (1909-1992) Study for the Nurse in the Battleship Potemkin, 1957.
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Literature · Reflection
“One of the most widespread superstitions is that every man has his own special, definite qualities; that a man is kind, cruel, wise, stupid, energetic, apathetic, etc. Men are not like that . . . Men are like rivers; the water is the same in each, and alike in all; but every riv
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Reflections · Reflection
“The ideal artist…retains his experience in a spirit of wonder and feeds it with creative lust.” George Wesley Bellows (1882-1925) A Day in June, 1913
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Reflections · Reflection
“I have the gift of neither the spoken nor the written word, especially if I have to say something about myself or my work. Whoever wants to know something about me -as an artist, the only notable thing- ought to look carefully at my pictures and try and see in them what I am and
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Reflections · Reflection
“Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.” Claude Monet Water Lilies, c. 1915, Neue Pinakothek, Munich
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Reflections · Reflection
“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking
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