What a painting needs

Can you let me know what you think a Painting needs to be successful? I will post your ideas here. Thanks, Jim

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1.Robert Genn
The painting needs a foreground, middle ground and background.
It needs a strong black, white and grayscale design.
It needs gradations, large and small and interlocking patterns.
It needs attention to counterpoint and negative areas.
It needs a sense of mystery, fantasy, illusion or wonder.
It needs fresh slashes, swipes and textures.
It needs not to be overworked, laboured or boring.
It needs colour sophistication--perhaps light and shade.
It needs at least some elements to be formed up properly.
It needs one area to determine what another area will be.
It needs to reflect the joy or meaning of an occasion, whether in the present or past.
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2. Jim
It needs to be authentic.
It needs to have mystery and unpredictability.
It needs to include opposites, near opposites and similarities in fine relationship.
It needs to have all of my attention, intention and love.
It shouldn't be tight and lifeless.
It needs to have variety.
It needs to have heart.
It needs to convince.
It needs to be unified.
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Famous People Say:

Clement Greenberg
Possesses the quality of simultaneous maximum diversity and maximum unity possible.
Keeps arresting our attention, goes beyond our limits and sustains it.
Has order, relationships, mystery, voice, unpredictability, boldness, struggle worked through.
Energy with a certain control and direction, “real” emotion…
Shows unity not uniformity
Has a largeness of spirit
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Robert Henri
An artist must be filled with emotion toward the subject, make his techniques so sincere, so translucent that the subject must be forgotten.
Fanciful, eccentric techniques only hide the matter to be presented. It is out of place and dangerous.
Spirit is set free in the superior artist.
Put form against form, color against color, line against line, texture against texture. Show through these interactions, the forces that bind them. It is a question of showing the life within.
Sea, sky and sand can be a good chord of textures if they are well differentiated.
The background is made out of, from and related to the subject/object.
Get a finer relation in all parts of the canvas. Space may be left bare, but it must be meaningful and be part of the structure of the whole.
Paint the spirit of rain.

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