Remember that a picture, before being a battle horse, a nude, an anecd — Abstract art

"Abstract art is only painting. What about drama? There is no abstract art. You always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality."

"To abstract something implies one of those mental activities (in contrast to emotional spontaneity) through which certain [aesthetic] values are isolated from the world of reality. However, when such values were realized visually and applied as purely constructive means, they became real. Thus the abstract was transformed into the real, thereby illustrating the relativity of the former term.. .The period of abstraction is at an end. Is not an elementary painting, which is to say a certain composition of plane-linear colours, organic in itself, more concrete?"

"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.."

"When you first saw a Cubist or Impressionist picture there was a whole way of instructing the eye of the subconscious. Dabs of color had to stand for real things; it was an abstraction of a guitar or of a hillside. The opposite is going on now [in 1960s]. If you have bands of blue, green and pink, the mind doesnt think sky, grass and flesh. These are colors and the question is what are they doing with themselves and with each other. Sentiment and nuance are being squeezed out so that if something is not altogether flatly painted then there might be a hint of edge, chiaroscuro, shadow and if one wants just that pure thing these associations get in the way."

"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."

"Somehow it doesnt seem long since I trudged in a picket-line; in the street here, and in the rain. A fairly muted demonstration against the Museum, which wasnt always in a mood for showing abstract paintings by Americans. It was fun I suppose-needless to say, the picketing produced no results. Yet a majority of the picketers are visible through their works at the moment, upstairs on the third floor, where its warm and out of the rain. However, this is no time to celebrate in fact its better if artists never celebrate. New abstract picket-lines are doubtless assembling, to protest the former picketers."