Abstract art

"The word abstract comes from the light tower of the philosophers.. ..and it seems to be one of their spotlights that they have particularly focused [sic] on Art. So the artist is always lighted up by it. As soon as it — I mean the abstract — comes into painting, it ceases to be what it is as it is written. It changes into a feeling which could be explained by some other words, probably. ..[abstraction was] not so much what you could paint but rather what you could not paint. You could not paint a house or a tree or a mountain. It was then that subject matter came into existence as something you ought not have."

"Observing sea, sky and stars, I sought to indicate their plastic function through a multiplicity of crossing verticals and horizontals. Impressed by the vastness of Nature, I was trying to express its expansion, rest and unity."

"Annie Besants book where she put forward the idea that theosophical mystical energies could be portrayed as colours or abstract shapes was practically the invention of abstract art. A lot of artists rushed out and read it and suddenly thought, oh God you could, you could portray love as a colour, or depression as a colour. All of a sudden abstract art happens, a flowering out of occultism."

"We are not talking about a new cognition in relation to abstract art, rather a new area of cognition.. .This is where abstract art steps in, in a stronger sense of life, a stronger contact with the growing life, a feeling of the pulsation of life and growth in oneself, an activation of deep-seated powers a staple vitality far deeper than our cognition, not instead of science but inspired by it."

"The more horrible this world (as today, for instance) [first year of World War 1.], the more abstract our art, whereas a happy world brings forth an art of the here and now."

"Abstractions and references must be totally avoided. In our freedom of invention we must succeed in constructing a world that can be measured only in its own terms. We absolutely cannot consider the picture as a space onto which to project our mental scenography. It is the area of freedom in which we search for the discovery of our first images. Images which are absolute as possible, which cannot be valued for that which they record, explain and express, but only for that which they are to be."

"Working in the abstract way seems to release ones personality and sharpen the perceptions so that in the observation of humanity or landscape it is the wholeness of inner intention which moves one so profoundly. The components fall into place and one is no longer aware of the detail except as the necessary significance of wholeness and unity.. ..a rhythm of form which has its roots in earth but reaches outwards towards the unknown experiences of the future. The thought underlying this form is, for me, the delicate balance the spirit of man maintains between his knowledge and the laws of the universe."

"The beauty of comfort.. .To compose with curves like that, and angles, and make works of art with them could only make people happy, they maintained, for the only association was one of comfort.. .This pure form of comfort became the comfort of pure form. The nothing part in a painting until then—the part that was not painted but that was there because of the things in the picture which were painted—had a lot of descriptive labels attached to it like beauty, lyric, form, profound, space, expression, classic, feeling, epic, romantic, pure, balance, etc. Anyhow that nothing which was always recognized as a particular something—and as something particular—they generalized, with their book-keeping minds, into circles and squares. They had the innocent idea that the "something" existed in spite of and not because of and that this something was the only thing that truly mattered."

"Remember that a picture, before being a battle horse, a nude, an anecdote or whatnot, is essentially a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order."

"It is clear to me that this [ De Stijl art] is art for the future. Futurism, although it has advanced beyond naturalism, occupies itself too much with human sensations. Cubism – which in its content is still too much concerned with earlier aesthetic products, and thus less rooted in its own time than Futurism – Cubism has taken a giant step in the direction of abstraction, and is in this respect of its own time and of the future. Thus in its content it is not modern, but in its effect it is."

"By the unification of architecture, sculpture and painting a new plastic reality will be created."

"The science is dealing with physical facts; in art we are dealing with psychic effects. With this I come to my first statement: The source of art – that is, where it comes from – is the discrepancy between physical fact and psychic effect. Thats what Im talking about. When I want to speak about why I am doing the same thing now, which is squares, for – how long? – 19 years. Because there is no final solution in any visual formulation.. .I have some assurances that that is not the most stupid thing to do, through Cézanne whom I consider as one of the greatest painters.."