Abstraction Quotes

• The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Simplicity, Design, Purpose

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• Abstraction is real, probably more real than nature.

  Josef Albers

  Real, Abstract Art

  Brenda Danilowitz, Josef Albers, Josef and Anni Albers Foundation (2001). “The prints of Josef Albers: a catalogue raisonné, 1915-1976”, Hudson Hills

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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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• 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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• Poetry is an abstraction bloodied.

  Wallace Stevens

  Poetry Is

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• The truly modern artist is aware of abstraction in an emotion of beauty.

  Piet Mondrian

  Art, Emotion, Modern

  "Natural Reality and Abstract Reality" by Piet Mondrian, published in De Stijl magazine, 1919.

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• Seek art and abstraction in nature by dreaming in the presence of it.

  Paul Gauguin

  Dream, Art, Nature

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• To abstract is to draw out the essence of a matter.

  Ben Shahn

  Essence, Matter, Abstract

  Ben Shahn (1957). “The Shape of Content”, p.63, Harvard University Press

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• I prefer to see with closed eyes.

  Josef Albers

  Eye, Perception, Closed Eyes

  Arts/Canada, Vol. 23, (p. 46), 1966.

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• I think, with abstraction, it's easy to fall into a sort of pastiche.

  Joe Bradley

  Fall, Thinking, Easy

  Interview With Laura Hoptman, www.interviewmagazine.com. May 15, 2013.

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• Pure drawing is an abstraction. Drawing and colour are not distinct, everything in nature is coloured.

  Paul Cezanne

  Drawing, Colour, Pure

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• Can one have love? If we could, love would need to be a thing, a substance that one can have, own, possess. The truth is, there is no such thing as love. Love is an abstraction, perhaps a goddess or an alien being, although nobody has ever seen this goddess. In reality, there exists only the act of loving. To love is a productive activity. It implies caring for, knowing, responding, affirming, enjoying: the person, the tree, the painting, the idea. It means bringing to life, increasing his/her/its aliveness. It is a process, self-renewing and self increasing.

  Erich Fromm

  Love, Mean, Caring

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• The story of evolution unfolds with increasing levels of abstraction.

  Ray Kurzweil

  Stories, Levels, Evolution

  Ray Kurzweil (2012). “How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed”, p.1948, Penguin

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• The paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Discovery, Weapons, Facts

  Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.32, Simon and Schuster

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• In every landscape should reside jewels of abstract art waiting to be discovered.

  Melissa Brown

  Art, Jewels, Waiting

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• Reflective abstraction, however, is based not on individual actions but on coordinated actions.

  Jean Piaget

  Action, Individual

  Richard Isadore Evans, Jean Piaget (1973). “Dialogue with Jean Piaget”, Praeger Publishers

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• It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.

  Doris Lessing

  Inspirational, Truth, Terrible

  Doris Lessing (1973). “The Grass is Singing”, p.52, Heinemann

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• I'm really interested in the nondefinitive element of abstraction.

  Julie Mehretu

  Elements

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• The bourgeoisie, which far surpasses the proletariat in the completeness and irreconcilibility of its class consciousness, is vitally interested in imposing its moral philosophy upon the exploited masses. It is exactly for this purpose that the concrete norms of the bourgeois catechism are concealed under moral abstractions...The appeal to abstract norms is not a disinterested philosophic mistake but a necessary element in the mechanics of class deception.

  Leon Trotsky

  Philosophy, Mistake, Class

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• Oh abstractions are just abstract
  until they have an ache in them.

  Stephen Dunn

  Abstract, Ache

  Stephen Dunn (1990). “Between Angels”, p.142, W. W. Norton & Company

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• I understood what he was doing, that he had spent four years fulfilling the absurd and tedious duty of graduating from college and now he was emancipated from that world of abstraction, false security, parents, and material excess.

  Jon Krakauer

  College, Years, Parent

  "Into the Wild". Adventure, Biography, Drama, 2007.

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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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• We must be careful not to confuse data with the abstractions we use to analyse them.

  William James

  Powerful, Science, Data

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• Historically and politically, the petit-bourgeois is the key to the century. The bourgeois and proletariat classes have become abstractions: the petite-bourgeoisie, in contrast, is everywhere, you can see it everywhere, even in the areas of the bourgeois and the proletariat, what's left of them.

  Roland Barthes

  Keys, Class, Bourgeoisie

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• The notion of a separate organism is clearly an abstraction, as is also its boundary. Underlying all this is unbroken wholeness even though our civilization has developed in such a way as to strongly emphasize the separation into parts.

  David Bohm

  Civilization, Unbroken, Way

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