Mark Rothko

"It was not that the figure had been removed, not that the figures had been swept away, but the symbols for the figures, and in turn the shapes in the later canvases were substitutes for the figures.. ..these new shapes say.. ..what the symbols said. [Rothko, explaining Seitz his new way of painting during the mid-1940s]"

"I do not believe that there was ever a question of being abstract or representational. It is really a matter of ending this silence and solitude, of breathing, and stretching ones arms again transcendental experiences became possible."

"Like the Cubists before them, the abstractionists felt a beautiful thing in perceiving how the medium can, of its own accord, carry one into the unknown, that is to the discovery of new structures. What an inspiration the medium is.."

"The activity of the artist makes him less socially conditioned and more humans. It is then that he is disposed to revolution. Society stands against anarchy; the artist stands for the human against society; society therefore threats him As an anarchist. Societys logic is faulty, but its intimation of an enemy is not. Still, the social conflict with society is an incidental obstacle in the artists path."

"It is Cézannes feeling that determined the form of his pictorial structure. It is his pictorial structure that gives off his feeling. If all his pictorial structures were to disappear from the world, so would a certain feeling."

"Since I have a deep sense of responsibility for the life my pictures will lead out in the world, I will with gratitude accept any form of their exposition in which their life and meaning can be maintained, and avoid all occasions where I think that this cannot be done.. ..unfortunately, there are few existing alternatives for the kind of activity which your museum represents. Nevertheless, in my own life at least, there must be some congruity between convictions and actions if I am to continue to function and work."

"Drama moves us: conflict is an inherent pattern in reality. Harmony moves us too: faced as we are with ever imminent disorder. It is a powerful idea. Van Goghs drama and Seurats silent harmony were born in the same country and epoch: but they do not contradict one another; they refer to different patterns among those which constitute reality."

"[I am] dealing not with the particular anecdote, but rather with the Spirit of Myth, which is generic to all myths at all times."

"I hope to paint something that will ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who ever eats in that room."

"A painting is not a picture of an experience; it is an experience."

"If our titles recall the known myths of antiquity, we have used them again because they are the eternal symbols upon which we must fall back to express basic psychological ideas.. ..(they) express something real and existing in ourselves."

"It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing. We assert that only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless. That is why we profess spiritual kinship with primitive and archaic art."