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" If the paying public demands naturalistic art, then an artist can use his skills to produce such pictures - but these are to be clearly distinguished from the artist's own art. "

Piet Mondrian

Skills

Then

Pictures

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" The position of the artist if humble. He is essentially a channel. "

Piet Mondrian

Channel

Humble

" I do not know how I shall develop, but for the present, I am continuing to work within ordinary, generally known terrain, different only because of a deep substratum, which leads those who are receptive to sense the finer regions. "

" Everything is expressed through relationship. Colour can exist only through other colours, dimension through other dimensions, position through other positions that oppose them. That is why I regard relationship as the principal thing. "

" If the universal is the essential, then it is the basis of all life and art. Recognizing and uniting with the universal therefore gives us the greatest aesthetic satisfaction, the greatest emotion of beauty. "

" All that is base in the masses is temporary, no doubt serving only to prevent evolution (that of the elite, as well) from proceeding too quickly and thus not becoming 'reality.' "

" I think that the destructive element is too much neglected in art. "

" The rhythm of relations of color and size makes the absolute appear in the relativity of time and space. "

" Non-figurative art is created by establishing a dynamic rhythm of determinate mutual relations which excludes the formation of any particular form. "

" We must look not to the negative (the misery, the bestial in life), although we undergo it and sympathize with it, but rather to the burgeoning life around us, which is strengthened by the negative. "

Piet Mondrian

Look

Misery

" Many appreciate in my former work just what I did not want to express, but which was produced by an incapacity to express what I wanted to express - dynamic movement in equilibrium. But a continuous struggle for this statement brought me nearer. This is what I am attempting in 'Victory Boogie Woogie.' "

Piet Mondrian

Struggle

I Am

" The natural does not have to be a specific representation. I am now working on a thing which is a reconstruction of a starry sky, yet I make it, nevertheless, without a given in nature. "

" To move the picture into our surroundings and give it real existence has been my ideal since I came to abstract painting. "

" As tradition, the female element clings to the old art and opposes anything new - precisely because each new art moves further away from the natural appearance of things. "

" The most advanced minds as well as the least advanced are obliged to use the same words. If we adopt new words, it will be even more difficult - if not impossible - to make ourselves understood. The new man must therefore express himself in conventional language. "

" Dance, theatre, etc. as art, will disappear along with the dominating 'expression' of tragedy and harmony: the movement of life itself will become harmonious. "

" We need words to name and designate things. But we have only a static language with which to express ourselves. "

" Subjectivity ceases to exist only when the mutation-like leap is made from subjectivity to objectivity, from individual existence to universal existence. "

" The subjectivization of the universal in art brings the universal downward on one hand, while on the other it helps raise the individual toward the universal. "

" The artist sees the tragic to such a degree that he is compelled to express the non-tragic. "

Piet Mondrian

Degree

Artist

" By turning from the surface, one comes closer to the inner laws of matter, which are also the laws of the Spirit. "

" The desire for freedom and equilibrium (harmony) is inherent in man (due to the universal in him). "

" Art is the path to being spiritual. "

" The positive and negative states of being bring about action. They cause the loss of balance and of happiness. They cause the eternal revolutions - the changes that follow one upon the other. They explain why happiness cannot be achieved in time. "

" I want to abolish time, especially in the contemplation of architecture. "

" I began as a naturalistic painter. Very quickly I felt the urgent need for a more concise form of expression and an economy of means. I never stopped progressing toward abstraction. "

Piet Mondrian

Need

Economy

" All individual thought is dissolved in universal thought, as all form is dissolved in the universal plastic means of Abstract-Real painting. "

" The meaning of words has become so blurred by past usage that 'abstract' is identified with 'vague' and 'unreal,' and 'inwardness' with a sort of traditional beatitude... The conception of the word 'plastic' has also been limited by individual interpretations. "

" Only conscious man can mirror the universal: he can consciously become one with the universal and so can consciously transcend the individual. "

" Experience was my only teacher; I knew little of the modern art movement. When I first saw the works of the Impressionists, van Gogh, van Dongen, and Fauves, I admired it. But I had to seek the true way alone. "

" I am only satisfied insofar as I feel 'Broadway Boogie Woogie' is a definite progress, but even about this picture I am not quite satisfied. There is still too much of the old in it. "