Abstract Quotes

• Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you.

  Jackson Pollock

  Abstract Painting, Compliment, Expressionism

  Quoted in FrancisVO'Connor Jackson Pollock (1967).

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• There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.

  Pablo Picasso

  Inspirational, Art, Reality

  Pablo Picasso (1964*). “Picasso and Man”

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• The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.

  Lucian Freud

  Motivational, Art, Real

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• I'm not a natural leader. I'm too intellectual; I'm too abstract; I think too much.

  Newt Gingrich

  Leadership, Thinking, Intellectual

  "The Politics of Perception" by Connie Bruck, www.newyorker.com. October 9, 1995.

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• Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict.

  Saul Alinsky

  Change, Mean, Vacuums

  Saul Alinsky (2010). “Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals”, p.21, Vintage

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• Language is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground

  Noah Webster

  Ties, Long, Joy

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• Even abstract shapes must have a likeness

  Willem de Kooning

  Shapes

  Willem De Kooning, John Elderfield, Lauren Mahony (2011). “De Kooning: A Retrospective”, p.13, The Museum of Modern Art

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• ...That which they call abstract is the most realistic, because what is real is not the exterior but the idea, the essence of things.

  Constantin Brancusi

  Art, Real, Essence

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• I am dominated by one thing, an irresistible, burning attraction towards the abstract.

  Gustave Moreau

  Passion, Burning, Irresistible

  "Gustave Moreau". Book by Jean Paladilhe, p. 32, June 5, 1972.

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• Change means movement. Movement means friction.

  Saul Alinsky

  Change, Mean, Vacuums

  Saul Alinsky (2010). “Reveille for Radicals”, p.224, Vintage

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• Touring was an abstract idea for me in the beginning. I didn't know where it was going to take me, but I knew that I wanted to go and play for lots of people. I always had that image in my mind. I had no idea what the touring experience was like, and how it was going to unfold, but I knew that I wanted to tour. Then it just started happening slowly started happening.

  Justin Nozuka

  People, Mind

  Source: mousertime.blogspot.com

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• I understand abstract art as an attempt to feed imagination with a world built through the basic sensations of the eyes.

  Jean Helion

  Art, Eye, Imagination

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• Abstract pictures are fictive models, because they make visible a reality that we can neither see nor describe, but whose existence we can postulate.

  Gerhard Richter

  Reality, Existence, Models

  FaceBook post by Gerhard Richter from Jun 07, 2013

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• I wanted to make abstract films that are emotional, and I still do.

  George Lucas

  Emotional, Film, Wanted

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Theater is far superior to film in poetry, in abstract poetry.

  Julie Taymor

  Film, Theater, Superiors

  "Transforming the World through Art". Academy of Achievement Interview, June 3, 2006.

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• I was a student at Harvard, and that's where I learned about so-called avant-garde music. Jackson Pollock, abstract expressionism and painting were well known at this time.

  Henry Flynt

  Artist, Avant Garde, Students

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• The longer mathematics lives the more abstract - and therefore, possibly also the more practical - it becomes.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Life, Individualism, Mathematics

  Eric Temple Bell (1945). “Men of Mathematics”

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• The more chaos there is, the more science holds on to abstract systems of control, and the more chaos is engendered.

  William Irwin Thompson

  Science, Chaos

  William Irwin Thompson (1987). “Gaia, a Way of Knowing: Political Implications of the New Biology”, Inner Traditions International

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• Judaism lives not in an abstract creed, but in its institutions.

  Berthold Auerbach

  Creeds, Institutions, Judaism

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• What goes on in abstract art is the proclaiming of aesthetic principles... It is in our own time that we have become aware of pure aesthetic considerations. Art never can be imitation.

  Hans Hofmann

  Art, Principles, Goes On

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• Within two hours of where I live, you have mountains and desert as location. I like the natural elements that abstract into light, texture, shape and shadow.

  Herb Ritts

  Light, Two, Shadow

  Herb Ritts, Paul Martineau, James Crump (2012). “Herb Ritts: L.A. Style”, p.3, Getty Publications

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• It is about this very abstract sense of displacement that he feels the moment he turns off the television.

  Atom Egoyan

  Television, Moments, Turns

  Interview with Ron Burnett, rburnett.squarespace.com.

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• I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism.

  Don DeLillo

  Thinking, Jazz, Influence

  Don DeLillo, Thomas DePietro (2005). “Conversations with Don DeLillo”, p.79, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I hardly need to abstract things, for each object is unreal enough already, so unreal that I can only make it real by means of painting.

  Max Beckmann

  Real, Mean, Enough Already

  Max Beckmann (2013). “On My Painting - Max Beckmann”, p.8, Tate Enterprises Ltd

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• When I conform to truth, I do not conform to an abstract principle; I conform to the nature of God.

  Kenneth Lee Pike

  Principles, Conformity, Conform

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