Abstraction Quotes - Page 12

When truth is nothing but truth, it's unnatural, it's an abstraction that resembles nothing in the real world.

Aldous Huxley

Real, World, Truth Is

Aldous Huxley “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley”

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It does not at first appear that an astronomer rapt in abstraction, while he gazes on a star, must feel more exquisite delight than a farmer who is conducting his team.

Isaac D'Israeli

Stars, Team, Atheism

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The love of fame is too high and delicate a feeling in the mind to be mixed up with realities, it is a solitary abstraction. * * * A name "fast anchored in the deep abyss of time" is like a star twinkling in the firmament, cold, silent, distant, but eternal and sublime; and our transmitting one to posterity is as if we should contemplate our translation to the skies.

William Hazlitt

Stars, Reality, Sky

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Persons without education certainly do not want either acuteness or strength of mind in what concerns themselves, or in things immediately within their observation; but they have no power of abstraction, no general standard of taste, or scale of opinion. They see their objects always near, and never in the horizon. Hence arises that egotism which has been remarked as the characteristic of self-taught men.

William Hazlitt

Men, Self, Mind

William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.175, Delphi Classics

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There is no interruption between my older paintings and my cutouts. Just that with an increasing sense of the absolute, and more abstraction, I have achieved a form that is simplified to its essence.

Henri Matisse

Essence, Painting, Form

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With greater completeness and abstraction, I have attained a form filtered to its essentials.

Henri Matisse

Simplicity, Essentials, Form

Henri Matisse (2011). “Matisse: Drawing Life”, Queensland Art Gallery

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Sometimes I start in a very realistic fashion, and as I go on from one painting to another of the same kind, it becomes simplified until it can be nothing but abstraction.

Georgia O'Keeffe

Fashion, Goes On, Painting

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By means of the sign, man frees himself from the here and now for abstraction.

Umberto Eco

Mean, Men, Here And Now

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Become aware of internal, subjective, sub-verbal experiences, so that these experiences can be brought into the world of abstraction.

Abraham Maslow

Experience, World, Internals

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Elegance is reduction, simplification, condensation. It is spare, stark, sleek. Elegance is cultivated abstraction. The source of Greek and Roman classicism - clarity, order, proportion, balance - is in Egypt.

Camille Paglia

Egypt, Order, Greek

Camille Paglia (1990). “Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson”, Vintage

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Literature expresses itself by abstractions, whereas painting, by means of drawing and colour, gives concrete shape to sensations and perceptions.

Paul Cezanne

Mean, Drawing, Giving

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The paradox in the evolution of French painting from Courbet to Cezanne is how it was brought to the verge of abstraction in and by its very effort to transcribe visual appearance with ever greater fidelity.

Clement Greenberg

Effort, Cezanne, Evolution

"Art and Culture: Critical Essays". Book by Clement Greenberg, "On the Role of Nature in Modernist Painting" (1949), p. 171, 1961.

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Almost without exception, blue refers to the domain of abstraction and immateriality.

Wassily Kandinsky

Blue, Domain, Exception

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I don't have any personal upset at the death penalty as an abstraction, What I do realize is how many mistakes can be made with the way things are being done now.

Michael Baden

Mistake, Upset, Way

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In past times when one lived in contact with nature, abstraction was easy; it was done unconsciously. Now in our denaturalized age abstraction becomes an effort.

Piet Mondrian

Past, Effort, Age

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A harmonious combination... enough abstraction that the image is sustained by the eye; enough reality that it is sustained by reason and experience. Share this quote with a friend

Jean Helion

Eye, Reality, Harmony

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No doubt, in complete abstraction one has a feeling of a great shock, if not an explosion, and in approaching the real, one feels health and truth restored.

Jean Helion

Real, Feelings, Doubt

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To think of abstraction as an end in itself is undoubtedly letting oneself be led into a cul-de-sac and can only lead to exhaustion and impotence.

Jacob Epstein

Thinking, Ends, Impotence

Jacob Epstein, (2013). “Let There Be Sculpture”, p.55, Read Books Ltd

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With cropping, a new integrity appears and winning abstractions flutter up like butterflies. You can afford to be critical, discriminating, innocent, open-minded, charmed, beguiled or bamboozled.

Robert Genn

Integrity, Butterfly, Winning

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Abstraction returned as soon as artists tried to come to closer grips with reality than naturalistic representation permitted.

Sigfried Giedion

Artist, Reality, Representation

Sigfried Giedion (1962). “The Eternal Present: The beginnings of art”, [New York

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No matter how brilliant, amusing or intelligent the creek of abstraction, Dadaism, Minimalism and Conceptualism of the 20th century was, it didn't much affect the historical river of figuration. I predict that in 50 years and in 300 years, figurative art will still be strong and important.

Mark Kostabi

Art, Strong, Intelligent

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Those who tell you that the territorial question is an abstraction, that you can never colonize another territory without the African slavetrade, are both deaf and blind to the history of the last sixty years.

Robert Toombs

Years, Deaf And Blind, Territory

Robert Augustus Toombs (1860). “Speech of Hon. Robert Toombs: On the Crisis. Delivered Before the Georgia Legislature, December 7, 1860”, p.8

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I guess I have no motivation to make an abstract painting, even if they sometimes read as abstract. I think, with abstraction, it's easy to fall into a sort of pastiche.

Joe Bradley

Motivation, Fall, Thinking

Interview with Laura Hoptman, www.interviewmagazine.com. May 16, 2013.

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Time is an absurdity. An abstraction. The only thing that matters is this moment.

Jonathan Nolan

Matter, Moments, Absurdity

"Memento Mori". Book by Jonathan Nolan, www.esquire.com. 2000.

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If a painting contains no abstraction nor impressionistic elements, it is a kite that will never fly. But if the painting completely breaks the connection between human feeling and the object portrayed, the kite string has been broken. I try to keep the line unbroken.

Wu Guanzhong

Broken, Feelings, Trying

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